


Undercover

by Heisey



Series: The Owl [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Blind Character, Blindness, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Drug trafficking, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Hell's Kitchen, Human Trafficking, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction (brief), Nelson Murdock & Page, Post-Season/Series 03, Pre-Karedevil, Secret Identities, The Owl - Freeform, Undercover operation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 30,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25539496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heisey/pseuds/Heisey
Summary: Matt goes undercover to stop The Owl’s bid to take over Hell’s Kitchen, and to keep Foggy and Karen safe. The sequel to “Starting Over.” Post-Daredevil season 3.
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson & Karen Page, Matt Murdock/Karen Page
Series: The Owl [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1850617
Comments: 18
Kudos: 38





	1. Moving Day

_Foggy_

“Moving day! At last!” Foggy exclaimed as he walked into the room above Nelson’s Meats that had housed the offices of Nelson & Murdock (and Page), ever since he and Matt revived their partnership, and Karen joined them as their investigator. Six months later, they were finally going to move to what Foggy called “a real office” on the first floor of a partially renovated brownstone, only a few blocks away. They had Luke Cage to thank for that. He decided to keep Foggy on as his lawyer after Foggy left Hogarth, Chao & Benowitz, and his new role as the boss of Harlem generated plenty of legal work. Luke wasn’t only working to keep the criminal element in check in his neighborhood. He was also one of the leaders of the movement to end the injustices that the people of Harlem had endured, for far too long, at the hands of law enforcement. The latest check from Luke, plus the contingency fees for two personal injury cases that settled sooner than expected, made it possible for them to make the move.

“Yeah, I know,” Matt said with a smile, emerging from behind the partition that divided his makeshift “office” from the rest of the space. Foggy watched as Matt made his way carefully across the room, finding a zig-zag path between the boxes scattered around the floor.

“Sorry about that, man,” Foggy said. Matt turned toward him with a quizzical expression. “About the boxes, I mean,” he explained.

“I know where they are, Fog,” Matt said patiently.

“I know, but – ” When he saw the expression on Matt’s face, Foggy decided not to say whatever it was that he intended to say. Matt might have a habit of making lame blind jokes, the worse the better, but he could sometimes become a bit . . . touchy, shall we say, when people, even Foggy, called attention to his disability. Especially when said people were “only trying to help.” 

“Let’s get to work, then,” Matt said, bending over to pick up the carton at his feet.

“Not yet,” Foggy said, “we need to get the table first.”

“Oh. Right.”

They climbed the stairs to the Nelson family’s apartment above the shop. Since Foggy’s parents’ retirement to Florida, his brother Theo was the only one living there. Their parents had left the dining table behind when they moved. It was too big for their condo in Tampa but was just the right size for the law firm’s new conference room. Theo wanted to convert the dining room into a home office and was happy for them to take the table off his hands. Together they maneuvered the table down the narrow staircase. For once, Foggy was thankful that Matt’s senses allowed him to carry his weight, literally. When they reached the bottom of the stairs and set the table down, Matt asked, “Where’s the van?”

“In the loading zone down the block,” Foggy replied.

“Let’s go, then,” Matt said, picking up his end of the table. They made their way down the street with Foggy in the lead. Once the table was loaded in the rented van, they spent the next hour carrying boxes down the stairs and ferrying them to the van on a hand truck borrowed from Theo. After the last box was loaded into the back of the van, Foggy went back upstairs for a final check, making sure nothing was left behind. Satisfied, he returned to the van and climbed into the driver’s seat. Matt was already there, in the passenger’s seat.

“Karen’s already at the new place, right?” Matt asked.

Foggy nodded. “Yeah, waiting for the furniture to be delivered.” He was still inordinately pleased with himself for discovering the used office furniture warehouse in Long Island City where he and Karen had picked out their new desks, matching credenzas, and the rest of the furniture they needed, all at bargain prices. He started the van and pulled away from the curb for the short drive to their new office.

The van was half empty by the time the furniture arrived. Matt, Foggy, and Karen took a break from carrying boxes to help the delivery men move desks, credenzas, chairs, bookcases, and a couch for the reception area into the space. When one of the delivery men asked Matt where he wanted his desk, he shrugged. “Interior decorating isn’t really my thing,” he said. 

Foggy caught the annoyed look Karen gave Matt before she answered for him. “Just put it in front of the windows.”

When the last piece of furniture was in place, Foggy signed for the delivery and tipped the men. As soon as they left, he flopped down on the couch. “Not so fast, Nelson,” Matt admonished him, “Those boxes aren’t gonna walk in here by themselves.” Foggy groaned but got to his feet.

“Why do I end up schlepping all the boxes with books?” Foggy griped. “You know, don’t you?” Matt grinned at him and headed for the door. Foggy and Karen followed. An hour later, the van was empty, and Foggy left to return it to the rental company. When he came back, he brought pizza and beer.

They gathered around the former dining table in the conference room. Foggy raised his beer bottle. “To Nelson, Murdock, and Page.”

Karen and Matt echoed him as the three clinked their bottles together. “Nelson, Murdock, and Page.”

Then Matt raised his bottle again. “To having our own desks again.”

They munched on pizza and drank beer in silence for several minutes. Then Karen jumped to her feet. “I almost forgot,” she said as she walked out of the room. When she returned, she was carrying a flat, rectangular object. She held it up. _“Voilà!”_ she exclaimed.

“What is it?” Matt asked.

“It’s the sign from our old office,” Foggy told him. 

“I found it in storage, when I went looking for a client file from the old firm,” Karen explained. She handed it to Matt, and he took it from her, running his fingers over the raised letters of his and Foggy’s names, then gave it back to her.

“The landlord has already put up a sign for us,” he pointed out.

“I know,” Karen said, “but I thought we could put it up in here, in the reception area. As kind of a reminder.”

She didn’t finish the thought, but Foggy was pretty sure he knew whom she wanted to remind and what she wanted to remind him of. The pained half-smile on Matt’s face told him Matt knew, too.

  
_Matt_

That night, Matt took up a position on the roof of the brownstone that now housed their office. Months had passed since they discovered “The Owl” was Lee Owlsley, son of the late Leland Owlsley, Wilson Fisk’s money man, but Matt was no closer to stopping Owlsley’s campaign to become the next boss of Hell’s Kitchen. No longer laced with deadly fentanyl, the “Owl” brand of heroin was again flooding the streets of the Kitchen. Matt had turned over dozens of Owlsley’s dealers and distributors to the NYPD, but there was always someone to take their places. Owlsley was also expanding his human trafficking, prostitution, gambling, and extortion operations. No matter what they did, Matt and the NYPD couldn’t get ahead of him.

Now there was another problem. For the past week or so, he’d been hearing talk of a new player, someone who was challenging Owlsley for control of Hell’s Kitchen. Clashes between Owlsley’s and the challenger’s thugs had become nightly occurrences. Unless innocent bystanders were endangered, Matt had stayed out of them. If two gangs wanted to take each other out, he wasn’t going to stand in their way. But he needed to know who was going after Owlsley’s operations. His usual informants all claimed not to know. Even Turk Barrett couldn’t be persuaded to give up a name. This was not good. He had to find out, before an all-out war erupted in the Kitchen.

He stood at one corner of the roof, searching for the sounds of trouble. It didn’t take long for him to hear them: the unmistakable sounds of a fight, a couple of blocks away. There were no screams or calls for help. It could be a bunch of belligerent drunks, but it might be Owlsley’s men and their rivals. There was only one way to find out. Matt took off across the roof, in the direction of the fight. By the time he arrived, the fight was over. He crouched down on a roof overlooking the scene, scanning it with his senses. He heard footsteps in the distance, running away. Two men were on the ground, unconscious. Two others were standing next to them. One of them bent down and lightly slapped the face of one of the unconscious men, apparently trying to rouse him. He didn’t respond. The man standing next to him swore, “Fucking Owl. We shoulda had them. The boss lady’s gonna be pissed.”

“Boss lady”? The new player was a woman? His heart skipped a beat. Could it be Elektra? She had gone after the Owl before, with him. No, he decided, it wasn’t Elektra. She wasn’t coming back, not after what happened the last time she did. Besides, it made no sense for her to come back. She wouldn’t be interested in street crime in Hell’s Kitchen, not after taking control of what remained of the Hand. But if not Elektra, who? There was only one answer: Vanessa Fisk. Shit. She must be rebuilding Fisk’s organization, getting ready for the next time he manipulated the system and regained his freedom. She was also untouchable. His deal with Fisk made sure of that. He couldn’t go after her, not if he wanted to keep Foggy and Karen safe. But if she and Owlsley weren’t stopped, there would be war in Hell’s Kitchen, and innocent people would die, caught in the cross-fire. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little shorter than my usual, but it's only the set-up. Chapter 2, where the story begins to unfold, will be posted soon.


	2. The Pitch

_Matt_

Two weeks passed.

During the day, when they weren’t working on their cases, Matt and Karen investigated Vanessa Fisk. Apparently, she had some money squirreled away, out of the reach of the Feds and the State of New York. She used some of that money openly to buy the Scene Contempo gallery, where she used to work. This allowed her to create a public image as a gallery owner specializing in undiscovered and underappreciated artists. Behind the scenes, Matt and Karen now suspected, she was using the rest of her money to rebuild her husband’s organization. Apparently, the rebuilding effort had made enough progress to enable her to contest Owlsley’s power grab in Hell’s Kitchen.

At night, the violence between Owlsley’s and Vanessa’s organizations continued unabated. If anything, it was getting worse. Matt went after drug dealers, pimps and muggers but continued to stay out of the clashes between Owlsley’s and Vanessa’s men. He hoped Owlsley could take down Vanessa on his own, and he could somehow convince Fisk he had nothing to do with it. But even if he could persuade Fisk, Matt wasn’t optimistic about his chances of preserving their deal and keeping Foggy and Karen safe. Fisk wouldn’t care that it was Owlsley, not Daredevil, who brought Vanessa down. Once that happened, Fisk would no longer have an incentive to honor the deal. But until Matt could come up with a better plan, this was his only option.

  
The answer came one afternoon when Matt was alone in the office. Foggy was in court, and Karen was serving a subpoena on a witness who didn’t want to “get involved.” His phone rang, a call from an unknown number, but Matt answered it anyway. It could be a new client calling. The number was unknown to him, but the voice wasn’t.

“Hello, Matthew,” Vanessa said.

“Vanessa.”

“I was wondering if you might be able to meet me at my gallery in, say, an hour.”

“What’s this about?” Matt asked.

“I’d rather not discuss it over the phone,” Vanessa replied, “but I assure you it will be to your advantage.” 

Matt considered this. He didn’t trust Vanessa, not for a minute, but he had to admit he was intrigued. And the risk was minimal. His deal with Fisk protected both of them. Vanessa was unlikely to blow it up, especially not by killing him in her own art gallery.

“All right,” he said guardedly, “I’ll be there.”

When he arrived at the gallery, it was empty except for Vanessa and two security guards. She dismissed them. They grumbled but obeyed. Matt recognized the dismissal of the guards for what it was: she was sending a message. Two messages, really. He was no threat to her, and she was no threat to him. Not at this moment, anyway. He followed her to an office at the rear of the building. She closed the door and said, “Have a seat,” gesturing to a chair on her right. “May I offer you a drink?”

“No, thank you,” Matt replied, pulling up the chair. Vanessa took a seat on the opposite side of a small low table. He turned to face her, raising his eyebrows. “So – ?” he began.

“I have a . . . proposal for you, involving our mutual adversary, ‘The Owl’,” Vanessa explained. “I have been following your efforts to curb his activities in Hell’s Kitchen, but I am sorry to say, they don’t appear to be working.”

“Got that right,” Matt muttered.

“I do, however, appreciate your staying out of the, ah, disputes between his people and mine.”

“I was hoping you’d end up taking each other out,” Matt observed.

“Of course you were. Not a bad idea, except for one thing: your agreement with my husband. If I go down, he will surely view that as – what do you lawyers call it? – a breach of contract?”

“Not exactly,” Matt countered. “I only agreed not to go after you myself. I haven’t, and I won’t.”

“Always the lawyer,” Vanessa murmured, “but I don’t think Wilson will appreciate the distinction. And if Owlsley prevails, there will be no reason for him to continue to honor the agreement. There will be no – what’s the legal term?”

“Consideration,” Matt replied. 

“Exactly.” Vanessa steepled her hands in front of her face. “I have a better idea, one that will preserve your agreement and keep your friends, and me, safe.”

“I’m listening,” Matt replied.

“A few weeks ago, I attempted an aboveboard approach to Mr. Owlsley. One of my associates met with him and offered an arrangement whereby he and I would share the heroin trade in Hell’s Kitchen. Owlsley’s answer to my proposal was to have my associate brutally murdered. His body was found in pieces, scattered around the Kitchen. In light of that outcome, I have concluded the only way to bring Owlsley down is from inside his organization.”

“Makes sense,” Matt commented. “But what does this have to do with me?”

“I want you to infiltrate Owlsley’s organization and help me bring him down.”

“Me?” Matt asked incredulously. “Why not recruit someone who’s already working for him?”

Vanessa shook her head. “No. I need someone who can be trusted. I suppose we might find something to give us leverage on one of his associates, enough to turn him. But someone who can be turned once can’t be trusted not to turn again. No. It has to be you.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something? I’m blind. Owlsley will never hire a blind guy. And I can’t pass for sighted indefinitely.”

“You won’t need to,” Vanessa said dismissively, with a wave of her hand. “You have skills that can be very useful to someone like Owlsley. You simply need to give him a demonstration of those skills. Once you’re in, you can gain his trust, get him to talk, maybe listen in when he’s talking to other people, find out what he’s planning. Then you tell me. You can do that as well as anyone, probably better.” 

“You have no idea,” Matt thought. Or maybe she did. He wasn’t sure how much Fisk had figured out about his abilities, but whatever Fisk knew, Vanessa knew.

“And he won’t see a blind man as a threat,” Vanessa added.

Matt bristled at the comment, but before he could respond, she continued, “People have underestimated you your whole life, ever since you lost your sight. We can use that to our advantage.”

She was right, but that didn’t mean Matt had to go along with her plan. “There’s no way it’ll work. I can’t go to work for Owlsley as Matt Murdock.”

“Of course not. Do you remember when Wilson went public with his plan for ‘A Better Tomorrow’?” Matt nodded. “The people who altered his life story on the Internet and in the public records still work for me. As we speak, they’re working on an identity for you. And we’ll change your appearance.”

Vanessa stood up and walked over to her desk. She picked up a file and handed it to Matt. “Meet ‘Michael John Murphy’,” she said.

Matt set the file down on the coffee table. “You’re forgetting one thing,” he said, “I have a life. I can’t just walk away from it. People will notice.”

“I haven’t forgotten that,” Vanessa assured him as she resumed her seat. “The cover story will be that you’re on a well-deserved sabbatical, at a religious retreat upstate. Entirely in character, don’t you think?” When Matt didn’t respond, she added, “The retreat is a real place, where guests are incommunicado during their stay. Fortunately, the chapel is in dire need of a new roof. The brothers were happy to accept my generous donation. And I’ve arranged for one of my associates to stay there under your name. If anyone asks about you, they will be told you’re there, for as long as we need you to be.”

Matt had heard enough. More than enough. He started to get to his feet. Then a final objection occurred to him. “Foggy and Karen will need to be in on it. They’ll never agree.”

“I think they will,” Vanessa replied confidently. “It’s for their protection, after all.”

Matt scoffed as he stood up. “Somehow, I don’t think they’ll see it that way.” He took several steps toward the door before Vanessa spoke. He stopped and turned to face her.

“Just consider my proposal, please,” she said. “If Owlsley and I go to war, it will tear Hell’s Kitchen apart. You know it will. And this is the only alternative.”

Matt walked out without replying. But he took the file with him.

  
Matt decided to walk back to the office instead of taking a cab. He needed time to think. Vanessa’s plan would never work, of course, but it had a certain . . . appeal. And a nagging voice in his head kept telling him her parting comment was correct: there was no other way to keep the Kitchen safe, not to mention Foggy and Karen. On the other hand, he couldn’t discount the possibility that it was all an elaborate scheme to discredit him or, worse, get him killed. He hadn’t detected any falsity in Vanessa’s voice or her heartbeat, but she could have concealed her true intentions without directly lying to him. He gave a mental shrug. Even if Vanessa was being honest with him, it wasn’t going to happen. Foggy and Karen would never agree.

When he arrived back at the office, he had the place to himself; Foggy and Karen had not yet returned. He sat behind his desk and opened the case file in front of him. He started reading the motion to suppress he’d filed several weeks earlier and was going to argue in the morning, but he couldn’t concentrate on the legal points he needed to make in his argument. His thoughts kept straying to the other file on the desk, the one Vanessa had given him. Finally, he gave up and closed the case file. 

He picked up Vanessa’s file and started to read. Halfway through it, he paused and smiled to himself at the name of the religious retreat he supposedly was going to visit: St. Dunstan’s Abbey. “St. Dunstan? Seriously?” he asked himself, recognizing the name of the saint who cleverly defeated the devil, twice. He wondered if Vanessa knew the story. And if she knew, was she trying to send him a message? He shrugged. He’d have to ask Karen to find out if it was a real place. Ten minutes later, his reading finished, he closed the file and leaned back in his chair. He had to admit he was impressed with Vanessa’s thoroughness and attention to detail, traits she shared with her husband. The plan, if it was a real plan, just might work. It wasn’t as if he had a better one. 

  
Foggy finally got back from court a little after 5 p.m. Karen had arrived a half hour earlier. As soon as he heard Foggy walk in, Matt picked up Vanessa’s file and followed Foggy into his office. He took a seat in one of their new client chairs and said, “We need to talk.” Before he could ask Karen to join them, he heard her footsteps approaching. “Take a seat, please,” he told her, gesturing toward the other client chair.

As soon as Matt finished explaining Vanessa’s plan, Foggy exploded. “Have you lost your fucking mind?” he demanded. Before Matt could respond, Foggy cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Never mind. I already know the answer.”

“Look, Fog, I know it sounds crazy,” Matt began.

Foggy cut him off again. “No, Matt, it doesn’t sound crazy. It _is_ crazy. Going undercover in Owlsley’s organization?”

“I have to do this, Fog.”

“No, you don’t.” Foggy leaned back in his chair, his arms crossed in front of his chest.

“You’re forgetting something,” Matt told him.

“What’s that?” Foggy asked.

“My deal with Fisk.”

“What about it?”

“You and Karen are safe only as long as Vanessa is. If Owlsley takes her down, the deal is history. I can’t let that happen.”

“Shit,” Foggy swore. 

“Just take a look,” Matt urged him, holding out the file. “It could work.”

“Yeah, and it could also get you killed,” Foggy protested. “I can’t believe you’d trust Vanessa. She’s Fisk’s wife, for chrissake.”

“I don’t trust her. But I do trust that she wants to take Owlsley down.”

“I don’t think it’s Owlsley she wants to take down. It’s you, Matt. You’re her target.”

“If that’s her plan, she’s going to a hell of a lot of trouble to get rid of me,” Matt argued. “There are plenty of easier ways to do it. Just read it, please,” Matt said, offering him the file again.

Foggy took the file and opened it, then groaned. “You know I suck at Braille.”

“And whose fault is that?” Matt asked him, then addressed Karen.“You have no idea how much time I spent – no, wasted – trying to teach Foggy to read Braille when we were in college.”

“Don’t try to change the subject,” Foggy told him, dropping the file on his desk. He turned to Karen. “Help me out here, Karen.”

She didn’t answer right away. Finally, she said slowly, “I don’t know . . . .”

“You gotta be shitting me!” Foggy exclaimed.

“Just hear me out,” Karen said. “Maybe we need to deal with one threat at a time. Right now, Owlsley’s the bigger threat. It’s his heroin, his thugs, that are everywhere in Hell’s Kitchen. Vanessa’s less of a threat, as long as Matt’s deal with Fisk is in place.”

“Yeah,” Foggy scoffed, “and how long’s that gonna be?”

“I don’t know,” Karen conceded, “but probably long enough for us to take care of Owlsley.”

Foggy shook his head. “I don’t believe it. You can’t be serious.”

“I’m not saying Vanessa’s plan is the way to do it, but we need to bring down Owlsley, one way or another.”

“You got a better idea?” Matt asked. “If so, I’m all ears.”

Neither Foggy nor Karen responded. Matt guessed there was some non-verbal communication between them that he couldn’t pick up. He decided to wait them out, but after several minutes passed in silence, he picked up the file, went back to his office, and made a call. When Vanessa answered, he said, “I’ll do it.”


	3. The Call

_Matt_

Matt didn’t want to live through the next ten days, or anything like them, ever again. At first, Foggy seized every opportunity to point out how crazy Vanessa’s plan was, and to try to talk Matt out of it. If he was being honest, Matt didn’t disagree. The plan _was_ crazy. That didn’t change the fact that neither he nor Foggy nor Karen had a better one. After a few days, Foggy backed off, becoming uncharacteristically passive-aggressive. When he wasn’t in court or at a deposition or in a meeting, he stayed in his office with the door closed. The silent treatment was marginally better than the constant bickering. At least they were able to get some work done for their clients.

After work on the ninth day, Matt and Karen went to Josie’s. They didn’t ask Foggy to join them. Karen got the first round and brought their drinks to the table where Matt was sitting. They drank in silence for a couple of minutes. Karen was the first to speak.

“I hate it when you guys are fighting,” she said.

“So do I.”

“I wish you would just talk to him.”

“And say what?” Matt asked, throwing up his hands. “I’ve already said everything there is to say. I’d just be repeating myself.”

“He’s not wrong, you know.”

“I know,” Matt said quietly.

“You don’t have to do this.”

“Actually, I do.”

“Why?”

“Vanessa made it clear that if I stay out of it like I’ve been doing, and Owlsley wins, Fisk will consider it a ‘breach of contract’.” Matt made air quotes. “He’ll come after you, Karen, you and Foggy. I can’t let that happen.”

“He can just do that?” Karen asked, “change your deal, just like that?”

“It’s not like he’s going to go to court to enforce it,” Matt said, “so, yeah, he can change it.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I have a bad feeling about this. I don’t trust Vanessa. She could have you killed, once you do what she wants. Then come after us, anyway.”

“She could, but what am I supposed to do?” Matt asked. “If Vanessa and Owlsley go to war, they’ll tear Hell’s Kitchen apart. Innocent people will die. If there was something you could do to stop it, wouldn’t you do it?”

“You know I would. I just wish there was another way.”

“Me too,” Matt said quietly, then drained his glass. He held out his hand. “I’ll get the next round.” Karen finished her drink and put her empty glass in his hand.

When Matt returned with their drinks, she asked, “How long do you think you’ll be gone?”

He shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. The idea isn’t to get admissible evidence that could be used against Owlsley in court. I’m not the best person to search for incriminating documents, anyway. The idea is to find out what Owlsley’s planning, and tell Vanessa so her people can sabotage his operations and eventually put him out of business.”

“I don’t know,” Karen said doubtfully. “That sounds like it could take a long time.”

“It could,” Matt agreed. “Depends on how long my cover lasts.”

They both fell silent. Matt didn’t want to think about what would happen when, not if but when, he was burned. He had a pretty good idea, and Karen probably did, too. 

Karen fiddled with her glass, finally taking a sip. When she set it down, she asked, “What are the odds? Of you coming back when this is all over, I mean.”

Matt didn’t answer her right away. He wanted to reassure her, but he owed her the truth. And he was pretty sure she’d know if he was bullshitting her. Finally, he said, “Realistically? Not good.” Karen nodded but didn’t say anything. Then he said, “You seem pretty chill about all this.”

She shook her head. “I’m not. Not about something that could get you killed. It’s more like I’ve just . . . given up.”

Matt’s heart sank. He hoped she didn’t mean what he thought she meant. But he asked her anyway. “What d’you mean, you’ve ‘given up’?”

Karen sighed. “I mean I’m done . . . with trying to save you from yourself. You’re the only person who can do that.”

“You’re right,” he said, “that’s not on you.”

Time to change the subject. A couple of men were walking away from the pool table after finishing a game. He stood up, held a hand out to Karen, and asked, “Want to shoot some pool?”

  
The call from Vanessa came the next morning. Matt put on his dark glasses and jacket and picked up his cane. As he emerged from his office, Karen stepped out of hers. Foggy stayed put.

“This is it?” she asked. 

Matt nodded. “Time to go.”

Karen pulled him into a brief hug. “Be careful,” she whispered before she released him.

“I will.” Matt inclined his head in the direction of Foggy’s office. It stung that he wouldn’t even say good-bye. “Look after him.”

“I will,” Karen assured him. She picked up on what Matt didn’t say and added, “He’s worried about you.”

“I know.” Matt turned and started to walk out of the office. He hoped it wasn’t for the last time. Then he stopped short, retraced his steps back to Karen, and kissed her. He walked away, leaving her speechless. When he was halfway to the front door, he heard Foggy’s footsteps behind him. He turned around, a second before Foggy enveloped him in a bear hug. 

“God damn it, Matt, you’re really doing this?” Foggy asked.

“I am.”

Foggy stepped back and took a deep breath. “Just . . . just watch your back, man.”

“I will.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah, I promise.” Matt crossed his heart.

“I don’t believe you, you know.”

“I know.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“I know that, too.”

“Try not to get yourself killed,” Foggy ordered, punching him lightly on the shoulder.

“See you soon,” Matt replied as he turned and walked out of the office.

  
Matt’s first task was to pretend that he was leaving the city to travel upstate to St. Dunstan’s Abbey (Karen had confirmed it was a real place). He went back to his apartment and packed a small duffel and a backpack. From there he took the subway crosstown to Grand Central, where he bought a ticket, paying with cash. Then he blended in with the crowd, following the travelers who were on their way to catch the northbound train that stopped at the town near the abbey. He waited on the platform until the train arrived, then boarded it. At the first stop, 125th Street, he got off and walked west for several blocks to catch the downtown subway. When he got off in SoHo, he headed to Vanessa’s gallery. A block north of the building, he ducked into an alley and made his way to the gallery’s rear entrance. He entered the code that opened the door and went inside, climbing the three flights of stairs to Vanessa’s office. There she presented him with a garment bag holding a custom-tailored suit, one of three, lined with the light, tough armor invented by Melvin Potter, along with a shirt and tie.

“Which one is it?” Matt asked, setting down his duffel and holding out his hand to take the garment bag from her.

“The charcoal grey,” Vanessa replied, “but don’t change yet. The barber is here.” She took back the garment bag and hung it on a hook on the back of the office door. Then she opened the door partway and stuck her head out. “We’re ready for you,” she said to someone outside the office.

Footsteps approached, then a man’s voice asked, “Where should I set up?”

“Wherever you want,” Vanessa told him. 

The barber only needed a couple of minutes to set up. When he was ready, Vanessa guided Matt to a chair. He took off his suit jacket and backpack and sat down. “I’m thinking a buzz cut,” she told the barber.

Matt frowned. “It’s hair,” Vanessa reminded him, “it’ll grow back.” The barber plugged in his clippers and got to work. When he was finished, Vanessa took a couple of steps back and said, “It’ll do. Now he needs to lose the stubble. I like the clean-shaven look.” 

A few minutes later, the barber’s work was done. Matt heard the rustle of paper as Vanessa handed something, probably cash, to the barber and said, “Thank you. Remember what I said.” The barber nodded, then gathered his things and left. 

When the door closed behind him, Vanessa turned to Matt and said, “You can change here. I’ll wait outside.” 

He didn’t change into the new suit immediately. Instead, he sat down and ran his hands over his face and head. He wondered what he looked like. Then he shrugged. It didn’t matter, as long as he didn’t look like Matt Murdock. At least, with this haircut, no one would ask him how he combed his hair. 

Presently, he reached for the garment bag and unzipped it, taking out the new suit. He fingered the fine wool fabric and the armor lining it. The shirt that went with it was silk. Vanessa had spared no expense. He had to hand it to her; no one would ever expect to see Matt Murdock in a suit like this. When he had changed into the new suit, he stepped out of the office, leaving his own garments behind. 

Vanessa stood up, apparently giving him the once-over. “Looking good,” she said approvingly, “but there’s one more thing: new glasses.” Matt started to protest, but before he could say anything, she pressed a pair of glasses into his hand. “Try these,” she said. He took off his glasses and put on the pair she’d handed to him. “Much better,” she announced. “The red ones are too noticeable.”

He couldn’t argue the point, so he said nothing. He pulled off the glasses and ran his fingertips over them. The frames were metal, in a style he thought was called “Aviator.” Not something Matt Murdock would wear. They’d do. He put them back on.

Vanessa opened a drawer in her desk and rummaged around before pulling out several items. “Your wallet,” she said, handing it to Matt, “with your ID and credit cards.” She named them and told him where they were in the wallet. He took it from her and put it in his breast pocket. “Don’t spend all my money,” she warned him.

“No chance of that,” he quipped.

Then she handed him a set of keys. “For your apartment. The one with the round head is for the building entrance. There are two keys to the apartment itself. The bottom lock is the key with the square head, and the upper lock, the deadbolt, has the round head with the raised rim. The small key is for your mailbox in the lobby. The mailbox has a Braille label with your name.”

Matt took the keys from her and examined them briefly before putting them in his pants pocket.

“Ready to go home, Michael?” Vanessa asked.

Matt picked up his duffel and backpack and followed Vanessa’s lieutenant, Francis, down the stairs and out of the building. They left by the rear entrance and walked a block to a waiting car for the drive uptown to “Mike Murphy’s” apartment in a Hell’s Kitchen building owned by Vanessa. Having Mike live in the Kitchen was a calculated risk, but an acceptable one. Mike’s apartment needed to be in one of Vanessa’s buildings, and that was where her properties were located. They had chosen a building in the northernmost part of Hell’s Kitchen, a dozen blocks from Matt’s apartment and even farther from Nelson & Murdock’s new office. There wasn’t much chance someone in this neighborhood would recognize Matt, especially with his changed appearance.

The car dropped Matt off two blocks from his new home. He walked the rest of the way, used his key to enter the building, and took the elevator to the top floor, the eighth. There he walked to the end of the hall and stood in front of the door to apartment 8B, holding his keys. Then he took a deep breath and entered. There was no backing out now. From now on, he would be “Mike Murphy,” living in his apartment, wearing his clothes, thinking his thoughts. It was the only way the plan stood any chance of success.


	4. The Approach

_Matt_

Matt spent the next week preparing. For the first two days he studied Mike’s story, until it was second nature. He was surprised at how similar it was to his own. Easier to remember, he supposed, and less chance of a slip-up. And the most effective lies always had an element of truth. He only hoped Owlsley and his people didn’t notice the similarities. 

The only part of Matt Murdock’s life that came with him was his Daredevil gear, packed in the duffel he brought with him. He had insisted that Daredevil couldn’t disappear when Matt Murdock “went upstate.” Someone might notice and put the pieces together. Vanessa reluctantly agreed. For his part, Matt assured her he would try to avoid visible injuries, so as not to arouse suspicions on the part of Owlsley’s people. What he didn’t tell her was that he would still do what was necessary to keep the Kitchen and its people safe.

The rest of the week was devoted to planning the approach to Owlsley. Vanessa’s watchers had reported that The Owl liked to spend his evenings drinking and talking with a few favored associates at a bar not far from Mike’s apartment. Matt decided to check it out one evening. He sat at the bar, drinking Scotch and scanning the place. He was surprised to discover it was a real Hell’s Kitchen bar. A couple of notches above Josie’s, maybe, but still a place where he could feel comfortable. It didn’t seem like the kind of place Owlsley would frequent; he expected the crime boss would prefer something more upscale. Maybe Owlsley was trying to make a statement, or maybe he just liked the bartender’s pours. Matt shrugged inwardly. Whatever Owlsley’s reasons were, this was the place to make the approach.

Matt sat at the bar for a couple of hours, nursing his drinks and turning over ideas in his mind. Owlsley and his associates arrived a half hour after he did. Occasionally, he listened in on their conversation. None of it was particularly interesting, until one of the underlings laughed and said, “Hey, look at Mr. Magoo over there, at the bar,” and pointed at Matt.

Owlsley’s reaction was immediate and unexpected. “Get him outta here,” he ordered. “Moron.” Two other men dragged him out of the bar. Matt heard a thud as the offending associate hit the pavement outside. The two men returned and rejoined their boss at the table.

Matt held his breath for a few minutes, hoping that Owlsley wouldn’t approach him. That would ruin the whole plan. He could improvise if he had to, but that wasn’t a great option. Finally, he relaxed. Apparently Owlsley thought he hadn’t heard the comment. He finished his drink, paid his tab, and left. A plan was coming together in his mind.

When he got back to his apartment building, he didn’t go to his own apartment. Instead, he knocked on the door of 8A. Like all the other apartments on the floor, it was occupied by Vanessa’s people. Among other things, they were his pipeline when he needed to communicate with Vanessa.

His knock was answered by a woman named Mandy. She was petite, with a high-pitched voice that grated on Matt’s ears, but Vanessa had assured him she was a competent operative. Tonight, she was all business.

“You have something?” she asked.

“A plan,” Matt replied, then explained his idea for the approach to Owlsley.

Mandy listened intently, then nodded. “I’ll get word to her. Anything else?”

“No.”

She walked him to the door. “OK. We’ll be in touch,” she told him as she closed the door behind him.

  
The next day, two operatives appeared at Mike’s door. They introduced themselves as Paul and Lila, no last names. Matt doubted those were their real names, but then again, he wasn’t using his real name, either. They both listened without interrupting while Matt explained the plan. 

When he finished, Lila said, “I like it.”

Paul nodded, “So do I,” he said, “but what if Owlsley doesn’t bite?”

Matt frowned. “Then we’re screwed,” he said. “There really isn’t a Plan B. Not involving me, anyway. No matter what the plan is, I only have one chance to hook him.”

“That’s a problem,” Paul pointed out. “Boss lady isn’t gonna be happy if we don’t get it done.”

“I know,” Matt agreed. From what he’d seen of her, Vanessa was not the forgiving type. “It is what it is. If you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears.”

“No,” Lila said, “I think this is our best shot.”

“Then let’s do it,” Matt told them.

They spent the next three days rehearsing and refining the plan. All three of them went to the bar, separately and at different times. Paul explained that it might look suspicious if he and Lila both showed up there for the first time on the night of the approach. Then he added, sounding embarrassed, “No offense, man, but we need to make sure you didn’t miss anything.”

Matt waved it off. “None taken,” he said. “Do what you need to do.”

Finally, they agreed they were as well prepared as they were going to be. They would make the approach to Owlsley that evening. A little after six o’clock, Matt stood on the sidewalk outside the entrance to the bar. This was their only shot. They had to make it work. “Showtime,” he told himself. He took a deep breath and opened the door.

Lila was already there, sitting alone at the bar. Matt took a seat at the bar, leaving several empty bar stools between them. He folded his cane and set it on the bar. The bartender took his order and returned with a glass of Scotch. He scanned the room as he drank. Owlsley and his associates were at their usual corner table. He listened in on their conversation but heard nothing of interest. 

When Matt’s glass was half empty, Paul walked in and sat down at the bar between Matt and Lila. He ordered a beer and took several swallows before turning toward Lila. “Too soon,” Matt thought, but he couldn’t do anything about it now.

“Buy you a drink?” he asked her.

“No, thank you.”

“Oh, c’mon,” he said, “a pretty lady like you shouldn’t have to drink alone.”

“I’m not,” Lila replied, “I’m waiting for a friend.”

“Well, then, I’ll keep you company until your friend arrives,” Paul said.

“That’s not necessary,” Lila told him. “I’m fine.” She stood up, picked up her drink, and began to move away from Paul.

“Don’t you walk away from me, bitch!” Paul yelled.

That was Matt’s cue. He slid off his bar stool, grabbed his cane, and unfolded it with a flick of his wrist. He heard the scrape of Paul’s bar stool on the floor as he got to his feet to follow Lila. Matt took a couple of steps toward Paul, then tripped him with the cane. Two swift, well-placed kicks to the back of his legs, and Paul went down to his knees. Matt crouched behind him and grabbed his right wrist, twisting the arm behind his back.

“‘No’ means ‘no,’ asshole,” he growled. “Got it?”

“Fuck you,” Paul replied.

“Wrong answer.” Matt pulled up on Paul’s arm, enough to be painful without doing any real damage.

“Ow!” Paul yelped in pain. 

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Matt asked. “Want to reconsider?”

“OK, OK,” Paul panted. “Just don’t hurt me.”

“Here’s how it’s gonna go. I let you get up. You apologize to the lady. Then you pay your tab _and_ hers. Then you leave. Got it?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”

“All right. I’m letting go of your arm now. But if you do anything other than what I just told you, well, I’m still here.” 

Matt gave a final jerk to Paul’s arm, then stood up. Paul groaned and got to his feet, rubbing his arm. He turned to Lila and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you.”

Lila nodded but said nothing. Paul pulled out what sounded like a stack of bills and threw them on the bar, then walked out, muttering curses under his breath. A couple of customers clapped as Matt resumed his place at the bar. He picked up his half-empty glass and drained it. Footsteps approached from the direction of Owlsley’s table. Someone pulled up the bar stool next to him and sat down.

“Can I buy you a drink?” a man’s voice asked.

Matt shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

“Lee Owlsley,” the man said, extending his hand for a handshake. Matt ignored it. Owlsley realized his mistake and lowered his hand.

“Mike Murphy.” Matt held out his hand, and they shook. Owlsley’s handshake was firm and dry. He was about Matt’s height, maybe an inch or two shorter, and a little broader. He gave off the aromas of a single-malt Scotch and a musky cologne.

After they shook hands, Owlsley said, “That was very impressive.” He didn’t say the words, but Matt heard them anyway: “. . . for a blind man.”

“What’re you having?” Owlsley asked. His voice was a pleasant baritone, with a hint of a Midwestern accent. 

“Macallan, neat,” Matt replied. If Owlsley was paying, might as well order the good stuff.

When their drinks arrived, they both drank, then Owlsley said, “I like the way you handled yourself with that asshole. But if you don’t mind my asking, how do you do it?”

Matt fell back on his stock answer to questions like this. “Sight is overrated.”

Owlsley barked a laugh. “Apparently so.” He took another drink and swallowed. “What line of work you in?”

“Actually, I’m, uh, between jobs at the moment,” Matt replied, trying to look and sound embarrassed. “I, uh, I was working for a real estate guy until a couple of weeks ago.”

“Doing what?”

“Basically, whatever he needed.” Matt paused for a moment, as if remembering. “Deliveries, collections, relocations, helping people understand what was in their best interests. That sort of thing, you know?” He smirked. “They never saw me coming.”

“Ha!” Owlsley gave a short, sharp laugh. “I guess not.” Then he lifted his glass and drank, apparently considering what Matt had told him. When his glass was empty, he set it down and said, “I might have an opening in my organization for a man with your, ah, skill set. You interested?”

“Maybe,” Matt replied. “What kind of organization?”

“I own a financial services firm, full-service, and . . . other things.”

Matt nodded knowingly.

“Why don’t you come to my office, say, tomorrow morning at 10? We can talk then.”

“All right.”

Owlsley reached into his pocket, as if to take out a business card. “It’s Owlsley and Associates . . . um, how do I – ?”

Matt anticipated the question and pulled out his phone. “Just put your information in here. I’ll find you.”

Owlsley tapped on Matt’s phone, then returned it to him.“I’m sure you will. See you tomorrow.” He stood and started to walk away.

“Yeah. See you tomorrow,” Matt replied.

  
At two minutes to ten the next morning, Matt was standing in the reception room at the 52nd-floor office of Owlsley & Associates. The receptionist – or maybe he was a security guard – was on the phone. When the conversation ended, he spoke to Matt. “Yeah?”

“Mike Murphy, to see Mr. Owlsley,” Matt replied.

“You got an appointment?”

“Yes.” 

“You know how to get to his office?”

“Never been here before.”

The guard-receptionist paused for a beat then yelled, “Hey, Denny, do me a favor and take Mr. Magoo here to _see_ the boss.” Matt knew that voice. It was the same man who’d called him “Magoo” in the bar, several nights ago.

Footsteps approached – Denny, apparently – and a man grabbed Matt by the arm and took a step, pulling Matt with him. Matt seethed. Then he remembered why he was here. He wasn’t going to let a couple of idiots throw him off his game. He jerked his arm from Denny’s grasp and took hold of Denny’s upper arm. “If you’re gonna lead me, this is the right way,” he said mildly.

“Oh.”

As they walked away, Matt heard the guard-receptionist on the phone telling someone, “Tell the boss Mr. Magoo is here to see him.” 

He followed Denny through a maze of corridors and open workspaces until they arrived at Owlsley’s outer office. Denny turned to Matt and asked, “What’s your name, again?”

“Mike Murphy.”

“Mike Murphy, to see Mr. Owlsley,” Denny said. “He says he has an appointment.”

“He does,” Owlsley said, walking out of his office. “Thanks for coming, Mike.”

“Mr. Owlsley,” Matt said, extending his hand for a handshake.

With the pleasantries taken care of, Owlsley guided Matt to a chair in his office. Owlsley sat across from him, behind his desk. “First, I want to apologize,” he said, “for my associate calling you ‘Mr. Magoo’.”

“Apology accepted,” Matt said mildly. “It wasn’t the first time.”

“No, I suppose it wasn’t,” Owlsley said. Then he called out, “Denny! A word, please, before you go.”

Denny walked into the office and stopped a few steps inside the door. “Sir?”

“Tell Shawn to pack up his stuff and get out,” Owlsley ordered. “He’s fired. We’ll mail him his final paycheck. I never want to see him here again.”

Denny nodded. “You got it, boss.” Denny left, closing the door behind him.

Owlsley leaned back in his chair for a moment, steepling his hands in front of him. Then he sat up straight and asked, “Where you from, Mike?”

“The City.”

“Where, exactly?”

“Hell’s Kitchen. Born and raised.” Owlsley’s heart rate ticked up. That answer had gotten his attention.

“That could be very helpful,” Owlsley said. “You may not be aware of it, but I have certain . . . business interests in Hell’s Kitchen.”

“I still live there, so . . . .”

“Even better.” Owlsley fell silent for a moment, seeming to look down. When he raised his head, he said, “If you don’t mind my asking, have you always been blind?”

“No, I don’t mind,” Matt replied. “And no.”

“How did you lose your sight?”

“Accident, when I was ten.”

“Oh.” Owlsley seemed at a loss for words. Then he asked, “So you learned to fight before that?”

“No, after.”

“Really?”

Matt nodded. “After the accident, where this happened,” he said, gesturing at his eyes, “I went to live with my aunt and uncle, my dad’s older brother.” He paused, then anticipated Owlsley’s next question and added, “My parents were killed in the accident.”

“I’m sorry, man, that sucks,” Owlsley said.

Matt ignored the obligatory response. “When I was twelve, my best friend from school got martial arts lessons for his birthday. I wanted lessons, too.” He gave a wry smile. “I wouldn’t shut up about it until my uncle finally gave in and found a place on the Upper West Side where they were willing to teach a blind kid. Years later, he told me he decided to let me have the lessons, because a blind kid growing up in Hell’s Kitchen needed to be able to defend himself.”

“He wasn’t wrong,” Owlsley observed.

“No, he wasn’t,” Matt agreed. “Anyway, I got the lessons and found out I was good at it, so I kept doing it. End of story.”

“You were educated in the City?”

“Yeah. Undergraduate at City College, then Fordham Law.”

“You’re a lawyer?” Owlsley asked, sounding surprised.

“No. Quit in the middle of my second year, decided the law wasn’t for me. Too many rules, and too many exceptions to the rules.” Matt smirked. If Owlsley checked the records created by Vanessa’s people, he’d find out that Mike Murphy had flunked out in his second year. But Matt decided Mike’s ego wouldn’t allow him to admit it. It was true, more or less. Mike _did_ quit, in a manner of speaking; he quit going to class and doing the work.

“And your last job?”

“Like I said last night, I worked for a real estate guy,” Matt replied. “I was basically his go-to guy. If something needed to get done, he came to me. He knew it would get done.”

“So why’d you leave?”

Matt paused, as if he was deciding how to answer. Then he said, “I didn’t leave, I was fired.”

“Oh?”

“The boss’s girlfriend was getting a little too friendly. The boss knew it was her, not me, but one of us had to go, and it was never gonna be her.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Owlsley told him, “my girlfriend doesn’t work here.”

“Thanks for the heads-up, but I try to stay clear of workplace hook-ups. Too messy,” Matt replied, trying not to think of Karen and how it had all gone so wrong. 

“Good policy.” Owlsley leaned back in his chair again. He seemed to be thinking. Matt waited. Then Owlsley said, “I think there’s a place for you here, if you’re interested.”

“What would the job be, exactly?” Matt asked.

“Basically the same as your last job – whatever I need you to do.”

“OK,” Matt replied. After a couple of seconds, he added, “As long as you don’t need me to drive.”

Owlsley chuckled. “No chance of that.”

“You haven’t said anything about compensation,” Matt pointed out. “I don’t work for free, you know.”

“Of course not.” Owlsley named a figure.

“That’s acceptable . . . to start.”

“Show me what you can do, and there’s no limit.”

“Good.”

Owlsley got to his feet and came out from behind his desk. Matt held out his hand, and they shook. “See you tomorrow morning at nine,” Owlsley said.

Matt nodded. “See you then.”

Owlsley walked across the room, opened the door, and said, “Carol, can you walk Mr. Murphy to the elevator?”

Matt waited until she was standing next to him, then took her arm and let her guide him out of the office. He managed to contain himself until the elevator doors closed and he was sure he was alone. Then he exclaimed, “Yes!” as he pumped his fist and grinned. He was in.


	5. Undercover, Part One

_Matt_

Working for Owlsley wasn’t what Matt expected. Most of his co-workers were friendly enough. Some simply ignored him, clueless about how to talk to a blind guy. (“Like anyone else,” Matt thought irritably whenever that happened). For his part, Matt walked a fine line, trying to appear friendly while keeping his distance. He wasn’t there to make friends. 

One day, he overheard a woman commenting that she’d like to know what it was like to “do” a blind guy. “Yeah, so would I,” another voice replied. A man’s voice. Matt smothered a chuckle and shook his head. Nope, not gonna happen, not with either of them. He wasn’t lying when he told Owlsley he tried to stay clear of workplace hook-ups. In this workplace, they weren’t only messy, they were dangerous.

To his surprise, Owlsley & Associates was a functioning financial services firm, serving wealthy clients who wanted to become even richer. Matt’s cover job was as an analyst. His pre-law classes in economics and finance weren’t his favorites, by far, but what he’d learned in them came in handy now. He soon discovered that the firm’s business wasn’t all about serving the clients; some of the “investments” the firm promoted looked a lot like Ponzi schemes. And, as he expected, the firm’s transactions were also used to launder the proceeds of Owlsley’s criminal enterprises.

It didn’t take long for Matt to figure out that what Owlsley was really looking for was a “fixer” – someone to deal with the problems that cropped up every day, it seemed, in a criminal enterprise, mostly because the people involved were, well, criminals. If that’s what Owlsley needed, Matt would fill that need. It was easier than he expected. Solving problems was what he did, as a lawyer and as Daredevil. Only the problems were different. As were the solutions.

His first assignment was a street-level dealer who had been putting his product into his own veins instead of into the hands of paying customers. His distributor had tried to find him to collect what he owed for the product, but he was a slippery son of a bitch. It took Daredevil two nights to locate the abandoned building where he had set up shop. Mike went to see him the next day.

“Hey, man!” the dealer called out from his seat behind a flimsy table, as Matt entered the empty space. “What can I do you for? I got H, oxy – ” He broke off suddenly. Apparently Matt’s dark glasses and white cane had belatedly registered in his consciousness.

Matt walked across the room and stood next to the dealer. “Neither,” he said. “I’m just here to talk.”

“Uh, OK, I guess.”

“The Owl sent me,” Matt said. “To collect the money you owe him.”

“You?” The man laughed, but Matt could sense his confusion.

“Yeah. Me.”

“Well, I don’t got it. What you gonna do about it?” the dealer asked as he got to his feet.

“I was hoping you’d ask that,” Matt muttered. 

The dealer lunged at Matt, swinging wildly. Matt sidestepped him, then dropped his cane and unleashed a right jab that connected with the left side of the dealer’s head. He fell back into the chair. He scrambled to get to his feet again, but as he did so, Matt landed a series of punches to his head and body. He fell back into the chair again, and Matt’s final blow sent him and the chair toppling over backward. 

Matt stood over the dealer as he lay on the floor, half-conscious. “That answer your question?”

The dealer didn’t answer. He didn’t resist, either, when Matt searched his pockets and took out a wad of bills, along with what remained of his drug supply.

The dealer moaned. “No, please,” he begged. 

Matt considered his options. There was really only one: cutting off the man’s drug supply. He knew what that would mean, but his priority was proving himself to Owlsley. He would do what he had to do. 

“You’re done,” Matt told him. “We’re cutting you off, as of today.”

“Please,” the man pleaded, “I’ll get you the money.”

“No second chances,” Matt told him. Then he held up the rolled bills. “This is just a down payment. If you don’t come up with the rest, we’ll be back. If you didn’t like this – ” He waved a hand above the battered dealer. “ – you really won’t like what happens then. Or you can leave the city tonight. Or you can choose this.”

Matt took a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and pressed it into the man’s hand. It had the contact information for a clinic in Queens where he could detox under medical supervision. Then he turned and walked away.

  
Matt’s next assignment was a mid-level distributor who’d been skimming from the cash his dealers turned over to him. Owlsley wanted him taken care of. He didn’t specify how. Matt found him in a bar in Hell’s Kitchen in the middle of the afternoon. The man was already half in the bag. He gave a startled jerk as Matt slid into the booth across from him. When Matt confronted the man with what he’d done, he could sense him going into full “fight or flight” mode. Then he crumbled.

“Oh, God,” he said, his voice breaking. “I’m sorry, it won’t happen again, I’ll pay it back, please, don’t – ” He stopped, apparently unable to give voice to what he thought Owlsley was going to do to him.

“You’re right,” Matt told him, in his most menacing voice, “It’s not gonna happen again.”

The man pulled a roll of bills from his pocket and put it on the table. “Here, “ he said, “take it, it’s all I have left.” Then he broke down and sobbed. “Please, you don’t understand,” he pleaded, “I had to. My son is sick, real sick. I got no insurance. I needed the money for him.”

He wasn’t lying. Shit. Matt considered this for a moment, then decided it didn’t change what he had to do. If the man kept doing what he was doing, he would be dead or in prison, and his sick kid would grow up without a father. Besides, if Matt succeeded, the man would be out of a job soon, anyway.

“If you were in trouble, you should’ve gotten word to The Owl. He could’ve helped you,” he said. That was a lie. Probably. If Owlsley had a humanitarian side, Matt had yet to see any evidence of it. “But it’s too late for that,” he continued. “We’re cutting you off. From now on, you’re getting no product.”

“But, but, you can’t – ” The man began to plead again.

“I can,” Matt replied coldly. He wouldn’t only cut off the man’s supplies from Owlsley, he’d also get word to Vanessa and make sure her people didn’t supply him, either. “You’re out of business. You need to get yourself and your family out of this city. Then find a real job, take care of your boy.”

“Easy for you to say,” the man countered.

“Not really,” Matt replied, gesturing at his eyes.

The man had no answer for that. Matt picked up the roll of bills, then got to his feet and walked out of the bar.

  
Owlsley seemed satisfied with Matt’s handling of his first two assignments and started handing him more and more problems to deal with. Not everyone was happy, however. No one said anything to his face, of course, but he heard the complaints. Most were of the “What was the boss thinking, hiring a blind guy?” variety. Others were about accommodating his disability. He only needed a few accommodations, but people bitched about them anyway.

His most vocal critic was Jimmy Callahan. That was not good. Callahan was a long-time associate of Owlsley’s who had recently taken over the position of The Owl’s second-in-command and moved into the office next to the boss. He’d been tapped for the job after the murder of Owlsley’s former right-hand man, Martin Broadus, several months earlier. Matt wouldn’t last long in Owlsley’s organization, if Callahan was his enemy. He needed to make him an ally, or at least not an enemy. His opportunity came one afternoon, when Callahan was talking to Tommy Greco, Owlsley’s head of security, in Greco’s office. Matt ducked into the empty office next to Greco’s to listen.

“I’m telling you, there’s something ‘off’ about him,” Callahan was saying. His high-pitched voice and strong Chicago accent made him easy to recognize.

“‘Off’ how?” Greco asked.

“I dunno, it’s just a feeling,” Callahan replied. Then he added, “He looks like he’s staring at me, and listening, all the time.”

“Dude’s blind,” Greco pointed out. “He’s not staring at anything, and of course, he’s gonna be listening. What d’you expect?”

“It’s not that. It’s like he’s looking right through me, like he knows stuff. It’s creepy.”

“He’s just a guy,” Greco protested.

“Oh, yeah? So tell me he’s not going after my job.”

“Jesus, Jimmy, you really think that?”

“Yeah.”

“How long you been with the boss?”

“Fifteen years, give or take.”

“You really think he’s gonna replace you with some guy he just met?”

“Look at the jobs he’s giving him,” Callahan pointed out. “They’re jobs I should be doing.”

“No, they’re not,” Greco replied firmly. “They’re penny-ante stuff. You’re the Chief Operating Officer. You don’t need to be doing chickenshit jobs like that, not in your position.”

“Maybe,” Callahan conceded. 

“You know what I think?” Greco asked.

“What?”

“I think you got an overactive imagination. You need to chill.”

“Don’t you think it’s just a little fishy that he just happened to be in that bar when that asshole hit on that girl, and the boss was there?”

“I looked into him after the boss took him on, and he checked out.” Matt breathed a silent thank-you to Vanessa and her people. “Besides, assholes hit on girls in bars all the time,” Greco pointed out. “And I gotta say, he handled himself pretty well. You weren’t there, you didn’t see it.”

Callahan huffed. “I still don’t trust him.”

Matt had heard enough. He left his listening post and stepped into Greco’s office. “You got something to say to me, say it to my face,” he declared.

“That was a private conversation,” Callahan said.

“Oh, yeah? Well, maybe you should learn to keep your voices down,” Matt told him. “And, for the record, I didn’t ‘get lucky’ when I took down that asshole in the bar.”

“Yeah?” Callahan scoffed. “Prove it.”

“You got it,” Matt said, starting to take off his suit jacket.

Greco moved to stand between Matt and Callahan. “Not here, guys.”

Matt answered first. “You’re right. I know a place.”

  
A little after eight o’clock that evening, Matt was standing next to the ring at Fogwell’s, after wrapping his hands and warming up a little on the heavy bag. As he warmed up, he reminded himself to stick to the basics, no fancy moves. He couldn’t afford to make Callahan more suspicious than he already was. 

While he waited for Callahan and Greco to show, he began to second-guess his choice of location. There were too many connections between Matt Murdock and Fogwell’s. If someone came, _when_ someone came, Callahan and Greco might not be alone. They might arrive with Owlsley’s enforcers, ready to take him out. Or there might be a solo assassin, sent to eliminate him with a single shot from a silenced weapon. Then he shook his head, pushing back against his doubts. As part of his preparation, Vanessa had provided a dossier on the backgrounds of Owlsley and his top aides. Like their boss, Callahan and Greco were from Chicago. It was unlikely they’d ever heard of Battlin’ Jack Murdock or his son, the blind lawyer. If he was wrong, well, there were worse places than Fogwell’s to die. 

He heard footsteps approaching and tensed, then relaxed a little when he picked up only two heartbeats, both steady. The door opened, and Callahan and Greco walked in.

“Shit, man, what is this place?” Callahan asked.

“Used to be a boxing gym,” Matt replied. “Went out of business a coupla years ago.”

“How’d you know about it?”

“I grew up in Hell’s Kitchen. Everyone in the Kitchen knew about Fogwell’s, back in the day.”

That answer seemed to satisfy Callahan. He took off his jacket and said, “Let’s do this.”

“OK.” Matt took a minute to size up his opponent. Callahan was about his height, maybe an inch taller, thin instead of muscular, with long arms that would give him an advantage in the fight. Matt climbed into the ring. Callahan and Greco followed.

Callahan wasted no time once they were in the ring. He threw a roundhouse punch that partially connected with the left side of Matt’s face. Matt chose not to dodge it completely, moving just far enough out of its path to avoid the full force of the blow. As he delivered the punch, Callahan rushed Matt, apparently thinking to take him down. Instead, Matt used Callahan’s momentum to flip him onto the mat on his back. Callahan quickly scrambled to his feet. “Nice move,” he said. Matt’s reply was a series of punches to Callahan’s midsection. He staggered but didn’t go down. Matt hoped Callahan and Greco couldn’t tell he was pulling his punches, trying not to do serious damage to his opponent. Owlsley wouldn’t like it if he did. Callahan regained his balance and attacked again. Wherever he had learned to fight, it wasn’t in a gym or a _dojo_. He would be effective in a street fight, but he didn’t have Matt’s skills. Matt let him land a couple of punches, then moved in close and unleashed a flurry of blows to Callahan’s face and jaw. When he sensed Callahan was feeling their effect, Matt moved in behind him and kicked his legs out from under him. Callahan went down on his knees. A final blow to the jaw put him all the way down on the mat.

Matt backed off and leaned over with his hands on his knees, catching his breath. When he sensed Callahan starting to get to his feet, he took a couple of steps toward him and held out his hand. “You OK?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Callahan grunted, waving off Matt’s hand and pushing himself to his feet.

“Buy you a drink?” Matt asked.

“No,” Callahan replied. “I’m buying.”

  
They ended up at the bar where “Mike Murphy” had first met Owlsley. Apparently Callahan or Greco knew their boss wouldn’t be there that evening. Callahan was still rubbing the left side of his jaw as he slid into the booth. “Damn, man,” he said, “how’d you learn to fight like that?”

“Lessons, when I was a kid.”

“You had lessons?”

Matt nodded. “Yeah. I was a blind kid, growing up in Hell’s Kitchen. I needed to be able to defend myself.”

“Makes sense,” Greco commented.

Matt continued, “I found out I was good at it, and I liked it, so I kept up my training.”

“Apparently,” Callahan said dryly. “What’re you drinking?”

“Scotch, neat, with a water chaser,” Matt replied.

Callahan slid out of the booth and went to the bar. When he returned with their drinks, he took a long pull from his bottle of beer before setting it down. Then he and Matt spoke at the same time.

“So – ”

“Look, man – ”

Matt waved his hand. “You first.”

“So – um, if you don’t mind me asking, you said you were a blind kid. Have you always been blind?” Callahan asked.

“No. Accident, when I was ten.” 

“That sucks.”

Matt shrugged indifferently. “You learn to live with it.”

This killed the conversation for several minutes. The three men drank in silence until Callahan said, “So, Mike, you were gonna say – ”

Matt took a drink of Scotch before answering. “Sorry if I’ve been creeping you out,” he said with a pained grin.

“Son of a bitch,” Callahan muttered. “You heard that?” Matt nodded. “I’m sorry, man, that was out of line.”

“No problem,” Matt told him. “I’m not made of glass, you know.”

Greco chimed in. “Yeah, we noticed.”

“And, for the record, I’m not tryin’ to take your job, Jimmy. Now that I’ve got a job again, I’m just tryin’ to keep the one I have.”

“OK,” Callahan said, “you do your job, and I’ll do mine.”

“You got it,” Matt said. He finished his drink and set the empty glass on the table before asking, “So how’d you end up working for the boss?”

“You know he’s from Chicago?” Callahan asked. Matt nodded. “I grew up there, in the system, one crappy foster home after another. When I turned 18 and ‘aged out’ of the system, I ended up on the streets.”

“Jesus,” Matt muttered under his breath.

“Then, one day, Mr. Owlsley found me and saw something in me, I guess. He sent me to college and then to business school. He saved my life. I can never repay him.” Callahan drank the last of his beer and started to stand.

Matt slid out of the booth quickly and got to his feet. “I got this round,” he said. Callahan didn’t object. 

After the second round, they agreed to call it a night. After all, it was a work day tomorrow, as Matt pointed out. Callahan and Greco got into a cab, heading downtown, and Matt walked in the opposite direction, toward Mike Murphy’s apartment. All in all, it had gone well, he thought. He and Callahan would never be BFFs, but he had gone a long way toward defusing the man’s hostility. Still, Callahan’s first loyalty would always be to Owlsley. He had no doubt Callahan would kill him without hesitation if Owlsley ordered it. He would have to make sure it never came to that.


	6. Undercover, Part Two

_Matt_

He thought Vanessa would be more patient, but he was wrong. He returned to Mike Murphy’s apartment late one evening, to find Jay, the “neighbor” Vanessa had installed in apartment 8D, waiting for him in the hall. He opened the door and followed Jay inside. His visitor sat down on the couch, and Matt took a seat on one of the chairs facing it.

Jay wasted no time getting to the point. “Mrs. Fisk called,” he said, “she wants to know what the fuck you think you’re doing?”

Matt was pretty sure those weren’t Vanessa’s exact words. “The job,” he said mildly.

“Yeah, well, she doesn’t think so,” Jay retorted. “It’s been three weeks now, with no results.”

“Seriously? More like only three weeks. Do you have any fucking idea what I’m tryin’ to do here?”

“Stop The Owl,” Jay declared, “and that’s not happening.”

“Not yet, maybe. And it never will, if we make a move too soon. Right now, I’m still the new guy. Anything happens, I’m the one they’ll look at. I have to make sure my position in the organization is secure, before I make a move.” 

“And how long is that gonna take?”

“As long as it takes.”

“Mrs. Fisk isn’t gonna be happy.”

“Tough shit. You tell Vanessa – ”

Jay interrupted, “You mean Mrs. Fisk.”

Matt leaned forward and pointed at him. “You tell _Vanessa_ she chose me for this job. She needs to let me do it. She doesn’t like the way I’m doing it, she can pull me out. I’m the one walking into Owlsley’s office every fucking day. It’s my fucking ass that’s on the line. And I’m telling you – I’m telling _her_ – if we rush things now, it’s all gonna go to shit. I’m not getting my ass killed because she can’t handle a little delayed gratification. Got it?”

“Yeah, I got it,” Jay said unhappily.

Matt wasn’t so sure. “If you don’t have the guts to deliver the message, I’ll tell her myself.”

“I said I got it,” Jay said, sounding like he was talking through clenched teeth. Maybe he did have some guts, after all.

Matt stood up and walked Jay out of the apartment. When the door closed, he leaned back against it and took a deep breath. Shit. The message he sent with Jay would buy him some time, but not much. He needed to show Vanessa some results, without jeopardizing the operation – or himself.

Matt went back to the living room, stopping in the kitchen to grab a bottle of beer from the fridge. He sat down on the couch and took a long drink. “What the fuck are you even doing, Murdock?” he asked himself. Then he remembered why he was doing this: Foggy and Karen. With a pang of guilt, he realized he had hardly thought of them over the past several weeks, too focused on being “Mike Murphy.” Damn, he missed them. He’d give anything to be able to sit down with them now and figure out a way to placate Vanessa and buy himself some time. Or even just hear their voices. That wasn’t gonna happen. He was on his own.

Thinking of Foggy and Karen brought back the memory of his conversation with Karen at Josie’s, the night before Vanessa’s call and his departure. What was it she had said? Something to the effect that she was “done” trying to save him from himself. She was right, of course. You couldn’t save people from themselves. But what did Karen mean when she said she was “done”? Obviously, she wasn’t going to try to save him or change him. But was that because she had decided, like Claire Temple before her, that she couldn’t let herself fall in love with the man he was? Or did it mean she accepted that he was that man? He pursed his lips, thinking, but the answer eluded him.  
  
He drained his bottle of beer, then went to the kitchen and threw it in the recycling. From there, he made his way to the bedroom closet. He pushed aside the hanging clothes and pulled out the duffel bag where he stashed his Daredevil gear. Time for the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen to make an appearance. He’d been going out several nights a week, to establish that Daredevil was active at a time when Matt Murdock was supposedly at a religious retreat upstate. That wasn’t the only reason. After a day or two of being “Mike Murphy” and hiding his abilities, it was a relief to be himself for a change – the Daredevil part of himself, at least – and hit a few bad guys. And Hell’s Kitchen still needed him.

So far, Owlsley’s people didn’t seem to suspect his nighttime activities. He wore gloves to protect his hands, and his business suits hid most of the injuries he sustained. There weren’t many. Some of the petty criminals he encountered didn’t even try to fight; they took off as soon as they saw him. Most of the others, those who stayed and tried to fight, were no match for him. On the few occasions when one of Owlsley’s people noticed a cut or bruise, he played the “clumsy blind guy” card. It worked, just as it had worked with Foggy and Karen – until it didn’t. He only hoped he could make it work with Owlsley’s people for as long as he needed it.

He opened the duffel and put on the armored leggings and undershirt made for him by Melvin Potter, then pulled on a black shirt and pants over them. He grabbed his mask and gloves and headed to the front door of his apartment. There he paused to listen. The hallway was clear, the elevator silent. He stepped out of his apartment and quickly covered the short distance to the end of the hall, where he opened the door to the stairwell. 

He took up a position at one corner of the roof and scanned the surrounding blocks. Amid the myriad sounds of the city, he heard a woman’s scream. Time for Daredevil to get to work. He took off in that direction. 

  
A couple of days later, Matt was working late, catching up on his assignments in his cover job as a financial analyst. Since his first two jobs in Hell’s Kitchen, Owlsley had been sending him on errands there more frequently. Matt wasn’t complaining; it meant he was gaining Owlsley’s trust. But he was starting to fall behind in his other work. He couldn’t let that happen; he didn’t want to give Owlsley or Callahan any reason to think he couldn’t do the job. When he finished updating the numbers on one of the “investments” the firm offered, he took out his earpiece and rolled his neck. Then he stood up and headed for the break room for coffee. 

When he returned, there was a file on his desk that wasn’t there before. He scanned the surrounding area, but no one was nearby, only a few scattered individuals on the far side of the floor. Owlsley, Callahan, and Greco had left together an hour or so earlier, probably for drinks and dinner. Matt hadn’t yet been invited to join them. Not that he minded; he had to be “Mike Murphy” all day, and he was just as happy not having to play the role in the evening, too. He picked up the file folder and examined it. There was no Braille label, so it probably wasn’t meant for him. He opened the file and checked its contents. Nothing in Braille, and his fingertips couldn’t pick up what, if anything, was written or printed on the pages. 

He considered the possibilities. It could be a message, but if that was the case, surely it would be something he could read. He went through the file again, more slowly this time, but again found nothing that might be a message he could decipher. He leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head, and thought. The answer finally came to him: it was a test. Owlsley or Callahan or both of them wanted to see what he would do with the file and the hidden information in it. It was a pass-fail test, but failing wasn’t an option. He needed to find out what, if anything, was in the file. That would dictate what he did with it. But he couldn’t risk scanning the file here; he would have to take it back to his apartment. He shoved it into his top desk drawer and went back to work.

An hour later, his work was finished. He took the file out of the drawer and put it in his briefcase. Getting it out of the building could be a problem. He’d overheard Greco saying that some of the security guards were on Owlsley’s payroll. It could be a set-up, intended to catch him trying to take the file out of the building. Or the guards could have been instructed to let him leave with it, as part of the test. There was no way to know. He would just have to chance it.

Matt’s heart rate ticked up as he stepped off the elevator in the lobby and approached the guard station. He recognized the guard on duty by the smell of cigarette smoke that always surrounded him, but he waited for the guard to speak first.

“Evenin’, Mr. Murphy,” the guard said. “Working late?”

“Evenin’, Jerry,” Matt replied. “Working late – again,” he added with a pained half-grin.

“It’s really somethin’, you know,” Jerry commented, “how you always know it’s me.”

“Not really,” Matt assured him. “How could I not recognize that voice?” he added with a laugh.

Jerry guided his hand to the line for his signature on the sign-out sheet, he signed, and he was out. As soon as he stepped out of the revolving door, he breathed a sigh of relief, then headed for Mike’s apartment. Once there, he grabbed a beer from the fridge and got to work. An hour later, he had his answer. The file contained the details of the Owl’s drug distribution operation in Hell’s Kitchen, including days and times of pick-ups and deliveries, along with where and when the street-level dealers were expected to hand over their cash to the distributors. Shit. This was exactly the kind of information Vanessa was pressing him for, but there was no way he could use it, because Owlsley knew he had the file. There was only one option. He deleted the files from his laptop and put the papers back in his briefcase. He would give the file back in the morning, pretending ignorance of its contents.

The next morning, he showed his employee badge and signed in as usual. Then the guard, someone new to him, stopped him as he turned toward the elevators.

“Your briefcase,” the guard said. “I gotta look inside.”

Matt handed it over. Whatever was going to happen, was going to happen. He listened to the guard rummaging through the briefcase’s contents. Then he heard the zipper closing. “All good,” the guard said.

Matt slung the briefcase over his shoulder and headed for the express elevator before the guard could change his mind. 

When he arrived at the 52nd-floor offices of Owlsley and Associates, he went straight to his desk, ignoring the “good mornings” he heard from several co-workers. Not bothering to sit down, he took the file out of his briefcase and made his way down the hall to Callahan’s office. 

“I found this on my desk last night,” Matt said, dropping the file on Callahan’s desk. “Could you see it gets back to the right person?”

“Sure,” Callahan said. “What’s it about?”

“How would I know?” Matt asked, smiling innocently (he hoped).

“Oh. Right.” Callahan sounded embarrassed. “Uh, well, thanks for bringing it back.”

“No problem.”

“Hey, before you go,” Callahan said, “the boss has something in Hell’s Kitchen he wants you to handle.” Matt listened as he described the problem they were having with a new gun seller. “I don’t care how you do it, just make sure he stays in line,” he concluded.

“You got it,” Matt said as he turned to leave.

  
Apparently he passed the test. He kept his head down, showed up for work every day, and did what he was asked to do, whether it was crunching numbers or running errands for Owlsley in Hell’s Kitchen. When he was in the office, he monitored his co-workers’ reactions to him and eavesdropped on their conversations. After ten days, he relaxed, a little. As far as he could tell, no one suspected him. He had to make sure it stayed that way, but he also needed to do the job he was sent to do. Vanessa wasn’t going to wait forever.

For a few days, he puzzled over his dilemma: how to give Vanessa some intel without arousing Owlsley’s suspicions. Then he remembered the night that Fisk blew up Hell’s Kitchen and what Vladimir Ranskahov had said about Al Capone’s accountant. If they couldn’t take down Owlsley for the drug distribution or the gun sales or the human trafficking or any of his other criminal enterprises, they could still follow the money and uncover the money laundering and the Ponzi schemes. Owlsley could go away for a long time for those crimes. Look what happened to Bernie Madoff. And Matt had the evidence right in front of him, on the computer that gave him access to the firm’s database. Vanessa wouldn’t be able to use the intel immediately, unless she decided to burn him and end the operation before he delivered any other results, but he thought that was unlikely at this stage of the game. If nothing else, it would show her he was holding up his end of their deal.

On his way home from work that evening, he stopped at an office supply store somewhere between the Financial District and Hell’s Kitchen and bought several flash drives. He took them with him to the office the next morning. That evening, he decided he would “work late” to “catch up,” despite being up to date, for once, with his number crunching. He listened as the 52nd floor emptied, leaving him alone. Then he identified the most damning financial files and began copying them onto one of the flash drives. He had been working for more than an hour when he heard the elevator doors opening. Someone was coming. Shit.

He hurriedly stopped the file transfer and pulled out the flash drive, slipping it into his pocket. Then he closed the file he had been copying and found an innocuous file to open. He was apparently reviewing it diligently when Tommy Greco appeared in the entrance to his cubicle, only seconds later.

“Hey, Murphy,” Greco said, his gravelly voice and Chicago accent unmistakable.

Matt got to his feet. “Mr. Greco.”

“Working late?” Greco asked.

Matt nodded. “Yeah. Some things take me a little longer,” he explained apologetically, gesturing at his eyes. That was a lie. With his screen reader set at its maximum speed, he could review a document as quickly as any sighted person. Sometimes more quickly. He was betting Greco didn’t know that.

“Oh. Right,” Greco said. “Well, uh, don’t stay too late. See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow.” Matt sank back into his chair as Greco walked away.

The sound of Greco’s heavy footsteps grew fainter. Doors opened and closed as Greco apparently checked the floor. Then his footsteps stopped in front of the elevator. Matt let out his breath when he heard the ding of the elevator arriving and its doors opening and closing. He waited for several minutes, until he was sure that Greco was gone, then got back to work. An hour later, he was done. He shut down his computer and left.

When he got home, he copied the contents of the flash drive onto a second flash drive. That one was for Foggy and Karen. He just needed to figure out a way to get it to them.

  
_Karen_

“I don’t like this,” Foggy declared, walking into Karen’s office and depositing himself in a client chair, “none of it.”

Karen looked up from her laptop. She had a pretty good idea what Foggy was talking about, but she asked him anyway. “Don’t like what?”

“You know,” Foggy told her, “this whole thing with Matt. I have a bad feeling about it.”

“So do I,” Karen agreed. “But it’s not like we could’ve stopped him, after he made up his mind to do it.”

“I know. I just can’t help thinking that if his cover’s blown, he’ll just, you know, disappear, and we’ll never know what happened to him. I don’t think I can do that again.”

“Me neither,” Karen said grimly, closing her laptop. “But if it happens, I don’t think it’ll go down that way.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Remember the man who worked for Owlsley, the one who was murdered a few months ago? Martin something?” Foggy nodded. “It was never published, but my buddy T.J. at the _Bulletin_ thinks he was the one who was lacing Owlsley’s heroin with fentanyl. He had a sister who died of an opioid overdose, and the fentanyl-laced heroin disappeared from the streets after his murder.”

“And your point is?”

“This Martin, he was executed, and his body was dumped where it would be found. Owlsley wanted to send a message. He’d do the same thing if Matt is burned.”

“And this is supposed to reassure me?” Foggy stood up and started pacing back and forth, shaking his head. “Jesus, Karen.”

“No, of course not,” Karen hurriedly answered. “I just meant . . . .”

Foggy stopped pacing and waved his hand. “I know what you meant. I just wish there was some way we could contact Matt, make sure he’s OK.”

“As if he’d tell us if he wasn’t,” Karen pointed out.

“I know, I know.” He resumed his seat and thought for a moment, rubbing his forehead. “Maybe we could go down to the Financial District, just happen to be there when Matt’s leaving work one day.”

“Too dangerous,” Karen objected.

“We don’t have to talk to him or anything, just get eyes on him.”

“Still too dangerous.”

“So, what, we’re just supposed to wait and hope Matt doesn’t get himself killed?”

Karen nodded. “Basically, yes. At least, he’s still going out as Daredevil, so we know he’s alive.”

“Good point,” Foggy conceded. “But it’s already been more than a month. How much longer is this gonna take?”

“It could be a while,” Karen replied. “Even after he’s in, it’s gonna take time for Owlsley and his people to trust him. It’s not like he can just show up one day and start messing with their operations. The new guy is the first one they’ll suspect.”

“Damn.” Foggy slumped down in his chair, looking deflated. “So what do we do?”

Karen sighed. “I don’t know. Be patient. Check for Daredevil sightings. And hope that no news is good news.”

“I guess,” Foggy said, “but, damn, I miss him.”

“So do I,” Karen said quietly. “So do I.”

Foggy frowned and ran a hand through his hair. “You know, I thought things were gonna be different, when I wrote our names on that napkin.” 

“Me, too.”

He looked up at her. “But nothing’s really changed, has it? Matt’s gone, doing his own thing, and all we can do is hope he comes back.” He sighed wearily. “It’s not like it’s a surprise. I know he’s not gonna change.”

“No, he isn’t. But he’ll come back.”

“You really believe that?”

“I do,” Karen said. She gave Foggy a quick hug when he stood up to go back to his office. “He’ll come back. We have to believe that,” she whispered before she let him go.

  
That evening, Karen was thinking about going to bed when she heard a scraping sound coming from one of her apartment windows. The one that opened onto the fire escape. She grabbed her handbag and pulled out her gun and pepper spray, then crept silently into the living room. She let out her breath all at once when she saw who was climbing in through the window.

“Matt.”

“Hey, Karen,” he replied, pulling off his mask.

“You couldn’t knock?”

“Wasn’t sure you’d let me in,” he said with a pained half-smile.

“Well, you’re in now, so you might as well sit down,” she said, gesturing toward the couch. He took a seat at one end. She placed the gun and pepper spray on the coffee table and sat down at the other end of the couch. “Nice haircut, by the way.”

He winced and ran a hand over his head. “That bad, huh?”

“Well,” she said slowly, “at least no one will recognize you.”

“That’s kind of the point,” he observed.

“Yeah, I guess it is.” She considered the implications of this for a moment, then asked, “So why are you here, Matt?”

He reached into a pocket and pulled out a flash drive. “To give you this.”

“What is it?”

“You know Owlsley’s cover is a financial services firm, right?” She nodded. “Part of it’s legit, but the other part is running Ponzi schemes and laundering money. This – ” He held up the flash drive. “ – is evidence of that. If we can’t nail him for the drugs and the guns and the other stuff, we should at least be able to nail him for that.”

She took the flash drive from his outstretched hand. “OK. But what am I supposed to do with it?”

“Nothing, for now,” Matt said. “Just keep it safe. When this is over, we can turn it over to Brett.”

“All right.” She fell silent for a beat, then said, “You said ‘when this is over.’ How long is that going to take?”

Matt frowned and shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t know. I’m in, but not really in, not the way I need to be to do what I need to do.” He shrugged. “It’ll take as long as it takes.” He paused, then asked, “How’s Foggy?”

“Worried,” she said. “He misses you. We both do.”

“I miss you, too. Both of you. And I’m getting tired of pretending to be ‘Mike Murphy’.”

“Why?”

“He’s kind of a dick.” Karen stifled a laugh. “I know,” he said. “It isn’t Mike. I’m the dick.”

“That’s not what I was thinking.”

Matt smirked. “Liar.” He stood up. “I should be going. Got to show people Daredevil is still around.”

Karen followed him to the window. Before he opened it, she pulled him into a brief hug and whispered, “Be careful.”

“I will.”

“Liar.”

He chuckled, then opened the window and slipped into the night.


	7. Undercover, Part Three

_Matt_

Three days after his nighttime visit to Karen, Matt was walking back to his desk from the break room when he heard voices coming from inside Owlsley’s office. He kept walking until he estimated he was out of “normal” hearing range. Then he stopped and bent down to tie his shoe. 

“No,” Owlsley was saying, “send them to the new location at 39th and 10th. It’s only half full. We need more stock there.”

“How many?” a second voice asked. Jimmy Callahan.

“Ten,” a third voice replied. Someone Matt didn’t know.

“Ages?” Callahan asked.

“Fourteen to eighteen,” the third man replied. Matt felt sick to his stomach. He now knew what they were talking about: human trafficking, the worst kind.

“You sure they’re arriving tonight?” Owlsley asked.

“I’m sure,” the third man assured him, “they’ll be there by one.”

Matt had heard enough, and the conversation appeared to be at an end, anyway. A single set of footsteps emerged from Owlsley’s office, walking away from him. With both shoes now securely tied, Matt stood up and made his way to his desk. What he had just heard sickened him, but it was also an opportunity. Vanessa would jump at the chance to disrupt this part of Owlsley’s operation, which would get Jay off his back – for a while, anyway. Equally important to Matt, there was little risk Owlsley would suspect he was the source of Vanessa’s information. So far, Owlsley hadn’t brought him into the human trafficking part of his business, for which Matt was grateful. Now he had a second reason to be thankful.

He checked his watch: 4:30. He finished his work in progress and shut down his computer before leaving. If anyone questioned his early departure, he could always say he had business to handle in Hell’s Kitchen. It was even true. It just wasn’t the Owl’s business. As soon as he was clear of the building and confident he wasn’t being followed, he called Jay and left a message: “Meet me at my apartment in thirty minutes.” A few minutes later, Jay replied with a text, which his phone read to him: “On my way.”

When Matt arrived at Mike’s apartment, Jay was waiting in the hall outside. Matt didn’t waste any time. As soon as they entered and made their way to the living room, he said, “Owlsley’s got an operation going down tonight that the boss is gonna want to take out.”

“What is it?”

“Human trafficking – young girls.”

Jay shook his head. “Ugh.” There were few crimes that Vanessa considered out of bounds, but unlike her husband, she drew the line at crimes against children. All of her people knew that. She made sure of it. “When and where?” he asked. 

“Tonight,” Matt replied, then filled him in on the details.

When he finished, Jay didn’t have any questions. He simply said, “Thanks, man,” and left.

A little after midnight, Matt was crouching in the corner of a rooftop overlooking the intersection of West 39th Street and 10th Avenue. The sound of young girls’ voices identified the building across the street as the location where Owlsley’s people were holding their “stock.” The thought made his skin crawl. The sound of several vehicles’ engines, idling, several blocks away, told him Vanessa’s people were there, waiting for the right time to move in. He was confident they would get the job done, but if they didn’t, he would. Now he just had to wait.

He didn’t have to wait long. It was a little before 12:30, he guessed, when a truck pulled into the alley next to the building across the street. Vanessa’s people arrived within seconds. The alley exploded with gunfire, shouts, and screams, but the melee was over within a few minutes. Vanessa’s people had come in force and quickly overpowered The Owl’s crew. Sirens approached. Vanessa’s people heard them and took off. The cops would finish the job for them. Matt stayed until he was sure the girls, both those in the truck and those in the building, were safe.

The next morning, The Owl was raging. Sitting at his desk, down the hall from the boss’s corner office, Matt could hear him clearly.

 _“They were waiting for us?”_ Owlsley demanded.

“Yes.” Jimmy Callahan’s reply was almost too soft for Matt to hear.

“Who was the rat?”

“We don’t know,” Callahan admitted. He sounded unhappy. For good reason.

“Well, find out!” Owlsley bellowed.

“Everyone who knew about the operation is either dead or in jail,” Callahan pointed out, “except you and me, of course.”

“How many in jail?”

“Four.”

“Bail them out,” Owlsley ordered. “Then sweat them until they give up the rat.”

“You got it, boss.” Callahan’s footsteps retreated into his own office.

It took a week of careful eavesdropping and discreet questions disguised as casual conversation, but Matt finally pieced together what happened to the four men who survived the attack. Apparently, they had enough time while they were in jail to get their stories straight. They agreed to finger Alex Petrov as the snitch. Petrov was conveniently deceased, having been killed by Vanessa’s people in the attack and therefore unable to contradict them. Owlsley didn’t believe them. He ordered Callahan to have them killed. Three of them ran after they made bail. The fourth didn’t move fast enough and was killed.

Later that same day, Matt was in Hell’s Kitchen, collecting cash from a mid-level drug distributor, the replacement for the man who’d been his second assignment. The distributor had set up shop on the third floor of a vacant tenement. When Matt reached the third-floor landing and opened the stairwell door, he heard voices. He held the door open a crack and paused to listen.

“I gotta get back to 50th Street,” a man’s voice was saying. Matt didn’t recognize the voice.

“OK,” the distributor said. “See you later.”

“Yeah, see you later.”

Footsteps approached. Matt closed the stairwell door silently, then darted up the steps and flattened himself against the wall of the fourth-floor landing, hoping the unknown man wouldn’t look up. He wasn’t sure he was out of the line of sight from below. The third-floor door opened and closed, and the footsteps descended. Matt waited ten minutes before descending to the first floor and leaving the building. He’d come back later. He had an idea what “50th Street” was and didn’t want the distributor to suspect his conversation had been overheard. He found a nearby diner and drank coffee until he judged enough time had passed. Then he returned to the vacant building.

The distributor was still there, sitting in a folding chair behind a card table. He looked up when he saw Matt approaching. “Yo, Murphy,” he said.

“Hey.”

“I got the cash,” he said, pulling a roll of bills out of his pocket and holding it out.

“It’s all here?” Matt asked.

“Yeah, of course.”

He was lying. “Let’s be sure, shall we?” Matt said, reaching into his breast pocket and taking out his currency reader. He unrolled the bills and peeled off the one on top, then fed it into the device. 

“One,” the electronic voice announced. The distributor gulped.

Matt raised his eyebrows. “Seriously?”

“The small bills are on top,” the distributor explained. Another lie.

“OK,” Matt said, taking a bill from the bottom of the stack and feeding it into the reader. 

“One.”

“Nice try, asshole,” Matt told the man, throwing the bills down on the table. “Now hand over the rest.”

The distributor scrambled to his feet. “Going somewhere?” Matt asked.

“Uh, what . . . no,” the man stammered.

Matt pushed him back into his chair, then pulled up another chair and took a seat next to him. “You need to think very carefully about what you do next,” he said. “Do you know what happened to the last guy who tried to skim more than his percentage?”

“Uh, no.”

“No one does. He disappeared. One day, he was just . . . gone. And the way he did it, it was a lot smarter than . . . this.” Matt waved his hand toward the bills on the table.

The distributor stood up and swung wildly at Matt, who dodged the blow. OK, the time for conversation was over. He had had enough of this asshole and his bullshit. Before the man could get his hands up to defend himself, Matt landed a blow to his head that took him down to his knees. Two more punches, and the man lay on the floor, unconscious. Matt patted him down and found a second roll of bills. A quick check with the reader confirmed the bill on top was a hundred. He stuffed the roll of bills in his pocket, along with the bills on the table, and left. Owlsley would have to find a new man for the job – again. And Matt would have to find out what was going down on 50th Street.

His route to the downtown subway took him along the block where the new office of Nelson & Murdock was located. He walked past the brownstone, staying on the other side of the street. At the end of the block, he stopped. More than anything, he wanted to turn around and cross the street, walk up the steps to the office and abandon the operation, dump “Mike Murphy,” just . . . walk away. He was sick of being “Mike Murphy,” sick of the things he had to do to preserve his cover, sick of watching his back 24/7. Men had already died because of this mission of his. How many more would die before it was over? He frowned and set his jaw. Not yet. Not until Owlsley was gone. He had to finish what he’d started. Only then would Foggy and Karen be safe. He walked on. But he stopped two blocks later and bought a burner phone.

That night, Daredevil tracked down one of Owlsley’s other distributors in an abandoned warehouse near the river. The man gasped and scrambled to his feet when he saw the vigilante.

“I’m just here to talk,” Matt assured him, holding out his gloved hands, palms up. “Tell me about 50th Street.”

“I don’t know nothin’,” the man protested.

“You’re lying,” Matt declared. “Try again.”

“No, I swear, whatever’s goin’ on there, it’s above my pay grade.”

Still lying. “Wrong answer.” Jesus, where did Owlsley find these bullshitters? Matt grabbed the man’s right wrist and twisted, hard. “What’re they doing at 50th Street?” he asked, in his lowest, most menacing voice.

“OK, OK, I’ll tell you,” the man panted. He took a deep breath. “It’s where the shit goes when it gets to the city. They cut it and package it there.”

“Where on 50th?”

“I don’t know the number – ” the man began.

 _“Where?”_ Matt twisted his wrist again.

“Ow!” The man took a gulp of air. “Between 9th and 10th, middle of the block.”

“North or south side?”

“North.”

“Floor?”

“The basement.”

Satisfied the man had told him everything he knew, Matt released his wrist. “You should probably leave the city,” he advised the distributor as he headed for the door.

When he was a couple of blocks away, Matt climbed a fire escape to the roof of a building. There he pulled out the burner phone he’d bought earlier that day and punched in Foggy’s number.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Fog.”

“Matt!”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Why’re you calling? What’s happening? Are you OK? Do you need help? What can I do?”

Matt interrupted his friend before he could ask any more questions. “Breathe, Foggy, breathe. I’m fine.”

“OK,” Foggy said doubtfully. “So why’d you call? 

“Maybe I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice.”

Silence. Then something that sounded like a sniff. Finally, Foggy said, “Damn it, Matt I hate this.”

“I know.”

“But it’s going OK, the job, I mean?”

“Yeah, it is. It took a while, but I think I’m finally getting somewhere.”

“And Owlsley doesn’t suspect?”

“No, I don’t think so. Not yet.”

“‘Yet’?” Foggy asked. Of course that’s what he would pick up on. Damn.

“I’m probably gonna get burned, sooner or later,” Matt said, as gently as he could. “It’s only a matter of time.”

“Please tell me you at least have a plan for when that happens,” Foggy said. “Preferably one that doesn’t involve you getting killed.”

“I do,” Matt assured him. That wasn’t strictly true. When he was burned, he probably wouldn’t see it coming. That made it a little difficult to have a plan. Foggy didn’t need to know that, however.

“And you’re being careful?”

“I am. Really.”

Foggy snorted. “I wish I could believe that.”

“You can. Honest.”

“Karen didn’t believe you, either,” Foggy informed him.

“I know.”

“Then you know we have plenty of reasons not to.”

Matt sighed. “I promise to be careful. I’m even crossing my heart. That enough for you, buddy?”

Foggy didn’t answer him directly. Instead, he asked, “How much longer?”

“As I told Karen, as long as it takes. I don’t have the kind of access to do any serious damage, the kind that’ll bring Owlsley down. He’s smart – and cautious. It’s gonna take time to gain his trust. I’m working on it, but I’m not there yet.”

“I get it.”

“How’s Karen?” Matt asked.

“She’s OK,” Foggy replied. But then he said, “No, she isn’t OK. She tried to hide it, but she was pretty upset after she saw you.”

“Upset?” Matt asked, surprised. She didn’t seem upset when he left. “Upset about what?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Foggy told him, “maybe the fact that she thought she’d just seen you for the last time. Alive, that is.”

Damn. Matt had no answer for that.

When Matt didn’t say anything, Foggy continued, “So when you come back – _if_ you come back – you two need to figure out what the hell you’re doing.” 

“But Fog,” Matt started to protest. There was nothing to figure out. He and Karen were friends, that was all.

Foggy interrupted him. “Yeah, right. Just talk to her, that’s all I’m saying,” he said firmly.

There didn’t seem to be anything else to say. Or maybe there was too much. “I should be going,” Matt said. “It’s late, or early, or whatever.”

“Yeah. You’ll call again?”

“If I can.”

“Make sure that you do.”

“OK.” On that note, Matt ended the call. He closed the burner phone and put it in his pocket, then climbed down from the roof. When he reached the alley behind the building, he took out the phone. He put it on the ground and smashed it with his boot. Then he picked up all the pieces he could find and discarded them in several random trash cans and dumpsters on the way back to Mike Murphy’s apartment.


	8. Undercover, Part Four

_Matt_

Matt waited a couple of days before passing on the information about the drug operation on 50th Street. He doubted anyone would connect Mike Murphy and Daredevil, but it was safer to be sure the distributor was gone before Vanessa made a move. He _was_ trying to be careful, even if Foggy and Karen didn’t believe him. When he passed on the information, he didn’t ask for the details of what Vanessa was going to do, and he avoided that block of West 50th Street when he went out as Daredevil. He found out that Vanessa had taken out the operation at the same time everyone else in the office did, when he came to work the morning after the attack. Everyone was talking about it, albeit in hushed tones. Owlsley was raging, again, but this time there seemed to be no question about the identity of the rat. Suspicion immediately fell on the distributor who had left the city a couple of days before the location was hit. So far, Owlsley’s men had failed to find him. Matt kept his fingers crossed that they wouldn’t.

In the meantime, Matt had other problems. Owlsley wasn’t satisfied with eliminating the men he thought had ratted him out. There was talk around the office that Owlsley was planning something big, to take out Vanessa’s organization once and for all, but no one seemed to know the details, and Matt didn’t yet have the access to be privy to the boss’s plans. That was both a curse and a blessing; a curse, because he couldn’t get the information he needed to stop the operation, and a blessing, because he was less likely to come under suspicion.

His opportunity finally came one evening, when he was pretending to work late, and Tommy Greco was holding a meeting with the men he’d tapped to lead the operation against Vanessa. By this time, Greco was so accustomed to Matt’s habit of “working late” that the security chief barely noticed his presence. Matt abandoned any pretense of working and listened to them discuss the plan. The more he heard, the more alarmed he became. Owlsley wasn’t messing around. He was going after Vanessa. The plan was simple: invade the art gallery during an opening, kidnap Vanessa, make her talk, then kill her. Matt tried not to think about what they would do to get her to talk. One thing was certain: she would resist at first, but in the end, she’d talk. Everyone did.

As soon as he heard Greco and the other men leave, Matt closed the file he had been pretending to work on. Then he listened, making sure they were gone. When he was certain they had departed, he headed for Mike’s apartment, stopping only to buy a new burner phone. He needed it to warn Foggy and Karen. When he arrived on the eighth floor, he didn’t go to his own apartment. Instead, he knocked on the door of 8A. Mandy admitted him without hesitating, apparently picking up on his sense of urgency. He started talking as soon as she closed the door.

“Oh, shit,” Mandy breathed when he was finished.

“Yep.”

“I’ll let her know. We’ll take care of it.”

“OK.” Matt didn’t ask her to let him know what Vanessa’s people were going to do. It was better if he didn’t know.

  
By the time the eighth floor was quiet, it was after midnight. Matt slipped out of his apartment and into the stairwell and ascended to the roof. There he pulled out the burner phone and called Foggy.

“Uh, h’lo?” Foggy sounded more than half-asleep. Damn, he must’ve awakened him.

“Hey, Foggy.”

“Matt?” Foggy sounded more awake now. “Are you OK?”

“I’m fine. I just need you to do something.”

“OK.”

“You need to find someplace safe, out of the city, and go there. You and Marci and Karen.”

“What the hell, Matt?” Foggy was fully awake now.

Matt had spent a good part of the evening debating how much to tell Foggy. Finally, he realized he had to tell Foggy the whole story. Foggy needed to keep himself, Karen, and Marci safe. He couldn’t do that if Matt kept him in the dark about what they were facing. He took a deep breath and said, “Owlsley’s going after Vanessa. He’s planning to kidnap her and make her talk, then kill her. Owlsley thinks she has someone working for her who’s been sabotaging his operations.”

“He’s not wrong about that,” Foggy observed.

“No, he’s not,” Matt agreed grimly. “If Owlsley grabs her, it’s only a matter of time before she talks. If she gives me up – and she will, sooner or later – Owlsley won’t only come after me, he’ll come for you, too.”

Foggy thought out loud. “The flash drive you gave Karen.”

“Vanessa doesn’t know I gave a copy to Karen, but it doesn’t matter. Owlsley will assume you know something, because of your connection to me. He won’t leave any loose ends.”

“Damn,” Foggy swore, then fell silent.

“You still there, buddy?” Matt asked after a couple of minutes of silence from his friend.

“Yeah, just thinking,” Foggy replied. “When did you say this was going down?”

“I didn’t, but it’s two nights from now. Vanessa’s having an opening at her gallery. They’re going to hit it then.”

“Shit, I got a trial starting the morning after that.”

“So get a continuance.”

“Easy for you to say. We drew Vargas,” Foggy said, naming a judge who was well-known for his dislike of continuances. “And it’s not as if I can tell him what’s really going on.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Matt assured him. “I have faith in your powers of persuasion.”

“Thanks for nothin’,” Foggy replied sarcastically. After a moment, he continued, “I’m thinking, I know a place – ”

Matt was quick to interrupt him. “ _No_. Don’t tell me. It’s best if I don’t know where you are. And don’t take your phones or anything else that could be used to track you.”

“But how will we know when it’s safe to come back?”

“You’ll know. Just watch the news.”

“And if Owlsley gets Vanessa . . . ?”

“Run. And keep running.”

“What about you?”

“If Owlsley gets Vanessa,” Matt told him, “there’s nothing you can do for me. Just make sure you, Karen, and Marci are safe.”

“But, Matt,” Foggy protested, “we can’t just leave you.”

“You can, and you will. Look, it’s basically a precaution. I’m guessing Owlsley won’t get Vanessa. She knows he’s coming for her. Her people will be waiting for him. But I’m not taking any chances with your safety.” He hoped he sounded more confident than he was. 

Foggy sighed, loudly enough that Matt thought he probably could have heard it without a phone. “All right. I’ve got a lot to do. I better get started. Just be careful, will you?”

“See you on the other side,” Matt replied, and ended the call, hoping that wasn’t the last time he heard Foggy’s voice. 

Before he went back inside, he smashed the phone and picked up the pieces. He’d get rid of them on the way to work in the morning.

  
Two nights later, Daredevil took up a position on the roof of a building across the street and two doors down from the building that housed Vanessa’s gallery. It was several stories higher than the gallery building, giving his senses an unobstructed “view” of what was happening at the gallery. It had been a long two days, staying in his lane as “Mike Murphy” while making sure the plans for the operation hadn’t changed and trying not to think about what would happen if his cover was blown. Now it was time. Whatever was going to happen, would happen.

He had arrived at his location early; the plans he’d overheard hadn’t mentioned the time of the attack. The opening at the gallery was still going strong when he got there, but he doubted Owlsley would care about the danger to innocent bystanders. Now people were starting to trickle out of the building, a few at a time. Good. Finally, a few stragglers departed, and he heard the door closing and the click of a lock. Not long after that, two large vehicles pulled up in front of the gallery and stopped, their engines running. Men got out and rushed the building. The glass in the entry doors shattered. Matt heard the _“splat!”_ of silenced gunfire, accompanied by screams and groans. Suddenly, all was quiet. Footsteps ran out of the building, toward the two vehicles. The men’s curses floated up to where Matt stood.

“What the fuck was that?”

“A damn shit show!”

“Son of a bitch!”

“Motherfuckers!”

“Shut your fucking mouths!” Matt recognized the last voice: Tommy Greco.

The men piled into the two vehicles. Greco yelled, “Go, go, go!” They peeled away and drove off at high speed. Matt couldn’t tell if Vanessa was with them; they were too far away for him to hear individual heartbeats. He heard sirens approaching. Time to go.

When he got back to Mike’s apartment, he listened to the news reports on the attack. They were calling it an attempted invasion-style robbery, foiled by the gallery’s security men. One of the attackers, not named, had been fatally shot. Vanessa was mentioned only as the owner of the gallery. There was no word on what happened to her during the attack. This was not necessarily reassuring. If she had been kidnapped, the NYPD might be keeping a lid on the news. 

After a few hours of restless sleep, Matt dragged himself out of bed. Mike needed to show up at the office as usual today. Especially today. He was drinking coffee when someone knocked on his door. His heart raced as his adrenaline spiked. As he approached the door, he heard the person’s heartbeat and relaxed a bit. 

He took a deep breath and asked, “Who is it?”

The reply confirmed what he already knew. “Mandy.”

He opened the door and stepped back to let her in. “Hey, Mandy.”

She followed him into the living room and sat down. “I thought you’d want to know what went down last night.” He nodded. “Vanessa’s safe. She wasn’t even there.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

“Yeah, they took her to a safe house, I don’t know where,” Mandy confirmed. “The artist was pissed she wasn’t there for his opening, but he’ll get over it. They told him she was sick, or some such bullshit.”

He let out his breath. “Coffee?” he asked, raising his cup.

“No, thanks, I should get back.”

“OK. And thanks for letting me know.” He stood up to walk her to the door. Then something occurred to him. “Tell them, uh, tell Vanessa’s people, she needs to stay at the safe house. Owlsley will try again.”

Mandy nodded. “Understood. But you have to make your move against Owlsley, and soon. They won’t be able to keep her there indefinitely.”

“Got it,” he said as she walked out the door.

The office was buzzing when Matt arrived that morning. He could hear the hum of people’s lowered voices even before he stepped out of the elevator. He didn’t bother to try to pick up their words. He knew what everyone was talking about: last night’s failed attempt. There was something else, too: an undercurrent of fear. He could sense it in people’s elevated heart rates, the breathlessness of their voices, and the acrid odor of stress sweat. He stopped in the elevator lobby, inclining his head in the direction of Owlsley’s corner suite. He wasn’t there. Nor were Callahan and Greco. No wonder people were fearful.

It was a long three days before Owlsley, Callahan, and Greco appeared at the office. Matt couldn’t help wondering if Greco remembered that he’d been working late, the night they planned the attack on the gallery. Even if Greco remembered, he told himself, there was no way Greco would suspect Matt had heard them. Or was there? One afternoon, he paced off the distance between his desk and the meeting room. He thought it was too far for anyone with normal hearing to hear what was being said in the meeting room, but he wasn’t sure. He didn’t really remember what it was like to have “normal” hearing. He supposed he’d find out soon enough if they suspected him. In the meantime, if he wasn’t going to abandon the mission – and he wasn’t – all he could do his keep his head down and do his job.

Two days after Owlsley’s return, someone stopped at Matt’s desk.

“Yo, Murphy.” A man’s voice. He didn’t recognize it. “Boss wants you in his office. _Now_.”


	9. Undercover, Part Five

_Matt_

“Be right there,” Matt said, but the man who delivered Owlsley’s summons was gone. He got to his feet and put on his suit jacket. His heart pounded. Why did Owlsley want to see him, and why now? He started toward the corner office, then turned back and picked up his cane. Most of the time, he didn’t use it in the office, but it might come in handy, this time. As he walked down the hall, he clenched his jaw, then took a deep breath, willing himself to relax. He had to be ready, physically and mentally, for whatever awaited him. 

When he reached Owlsley’s office, he stood in the doorway, holding his cane in front of him and waiting to be noticed.

Owlsley snapped out orders to two men standing along the wall. “You got it boss,” one of them said as they pushed past Matt and left.

“Murphy,” Owlsley said, “come in, come in.”

“You wanted to see me, sir?” Matt asked, trying to keep his voice even.

“Yes,” Owlsley replied, waving a hand, “have a seat.”

Tommy Greco came up behind Matt and whispered, “Two o’clock.”

Matt found the chair and took a seat. “What the hell?” he wondered. He didn’t detect a threat, not even any hostility. Thoroughly baffled, he waited for Owlsley to speak. Finally he did.

“Jimmy and Tommy here have been telling me what a good job you’re doing, up in Hell’s Kitchen.”

 _That’s_ what this was about? Holy shit. Matt found his voice and managed a hoarse “thank you” from his constricted throat.

“No,” Owlsley said, “I should be the one thanking you. You’re the first person since . . . well, in a long time, who can keep those assholes in line.” 

His heart rate returning to normal, Matt took a deep breath and quipped, “Must be because I’m one of them.”

Owlsley barked out a laugh, then said, “Yeah, well, you know how to talk to them. I can use that. Someone in Hell’s Kitchen is fucking with us, passing information to Vanessa Fisk. You’re gonna find him for me. From now on, I want you reporting directly to me, or to Jimmy, if I’m not available. Anything you know, I know. Got it?”

“Understood.” Sensing the conversation was over, Matt started to get to his feet.

“One other thing,” Owlsley said. “Join us at dinner tonight.”

“Uh, OK. Sure.”

“Seven o’clock. Tommy, you bring Mike with you.”

“You got it, boss,” Greco replied.

“See you tonight,” Matt said as he walked out. He struggled to maintain an even pace on the way back to his desk. Once there, he fell into his chair and let relief wash over him. He whispered “yes!” and pumped his fist under the desk. He was finally in, all the way.

  
Matt waited ten days before making his next move. He knew Mandy was right – Vanessa’s patience wouldn’t last – but if he acted too soon, Owlsley would be suspicious. He couldn’t afford that. He spent most of those ten days in Hell’s Kitchen, keeping up the pretense that he was looking for the spy in Owlsley’s organization.

His target was the Owl’s gun-running business, a part of the operation he hadn’t been heavily involved in, so far. On the tenth night, Daredevil went in search of Turk Barrett. If anyone could tell him what he needed to know, it was Turk. Matt found him in a boarded-up storefront on 11th Avenue.

“Awww, shit,” Barrett grumbled when he spotted Daredevil approaching. “What d’you want now?”

“Just some information.”

“I’m not a snitch,” Barrett objected.

“Not asking you to snitch,” Matt assured him. “In fact, you help me, you’ll be helping yourself, too.”

“Yeah?”

“The new man in the Kitchen, the one they call ‘The Owl,’ I figure he’s been taking a big bite out of your business.”

“No shit,” Barrett muttered.

“So where does he keep his stock?”

“How should I know?”

“You’re lying,” Matt told him. “It’s your business to know. And you’re gonna tell me. You know how this goes. You wanna do this the easy way or the hard way?”

Barrett fell silent, apparently considering his options. Then he said, “If I tell you, you gotta leave me out of it. This can’t come back to me.”

“It won’t.”

“Only location I know of is a vacant building on 44th, between 9th and 10th.”

“How’d you find out about it?” Matt asked.

“Customer of mine bought some pieces there. No such thing as loyalty anymore. Turned out, they were junk. He came crawling back.”

“Where’re the guns in the building?”

“The heavy firepower is in the basement, the rest of the stuff is on the ground floor.”

“OK.” Matt turned to leave.

“You remember,” Barrett called after him, “you didn’t hear it from me.”

“You got it.”

As Matt loped away, he heard Barrett’s parting shot. “It was real nice around here, you know, while you were gone. Why’d you have to come back, anyway?”

Matt didn’t answer him.

  
Matt passed on the information to Vanessa's people in the morning. That night, he scouted the location Barrett had given him. Barrett hadn’t lied: Matt could hear the sound of metal on metal as weapons were being assembled, and he could smell the gun oil. A couple of The Owl’s men were there, too, debating the merits of the Ruger and Glock 9 mm. semi-automatics. Matt maintained his surveillance for the next two nights but stayed hidden. He didn’t want anyone to spot Daredevil near the location. 

Vanessa’s crew came on the third night. They moved in quickly and took out Owlsley’s men so quietly that Matt could barely hear them. Apparently, no one else had heard anything, and no one called the cops. After a few minutes, a truck pulled up in back of the building. Vanessa’s people brought out the weapons and loaded them onto the truck, then drove away. 

Matt frowned as he listened to the truck leaving. He would have liked to see the guns taken off the streets, but he couldn’t risk an anonymous call to Brett Mahoney. Vanessa would surely suspect him of being the caller, and that was a betrayal she would not forgive. He jogged to the edge of the roof, relieved to be getting away from the place. It was . . . unsettling. It wasn’t the guns. It was the location, only a block from Midland Circle. He could almost smell the smoke and ash, and his hip was starting to ache. He rubbed it irritably. He thought he’d put all that behind him. He shook his head. Suck it up, Murdock, he told himself, you have a job to do. He leaped to the roof of the building next door and headed back to Mike Murphy’s apartment. 

  
In the morning, Matt heard the worried whispers as soon as he arrived in the office. Something had happened last night, something bad, but the people who knew weren’t talking. He spent the morning at his desk, pretending to work but really listening and deciding how to play it if Owlsley summoned him.

The summons finally came a little before noon. As usual when he was called to the boss’s office, he paused in the doorway, grasping his cane, and waited to be told to enter.

“C’mon in, Murphy,” Callahan said, “take a seat.”

Immediately, Greco was at his side. Matt took his arm and allowed him to guide him to a chair. When he was seated, Callahan asked, “You know what happened last night?”

Matt shook his head. “No.”

“She cleaned us out, God damn her,” Owlsley said.

Matt turned toward him, his eyebrows raised.

Callahan explained. “The Fisk bitch. She hit our gun supply, took all of our stock.”

“And took out four of our people,” Greco added.

“Damn,” Matt said, shaking his head again.

“She’s costing us a shitload of money,” Owlsley griped. “I want her stopped. _Now_.”

Listening to Owlsley’s complaint, Matt realized the loss of money angered him more than the loss of his men’s lives. It was a reminder of why he was doing what he was doing, and why he had to succeed. Then he set that thought aside. “What can I do?” he asked.

“You’ve been looking for the rat who sold us out to the Fisk bitch.”

“I have.”

“So, what d’you got?” Owlsley asked. “Anything?”

“Maybe.”

“What?” Owlsley demanded. “If you’ve found the traitor in this organization, you need to tell me _now_.”

“Actually,” Matt replied, “I don’t think it’s someone in the organization.”

_“What?”_

Matt steepled his hands in front of his face, as if he was thinking. Then he said, “My money’s on Turk Barrett.”


	10. Undercover, Part Six

_Matt_

“What the fuck? Barrett?” Owlsley scoffed. “You gotta be kidding me.”

“Just hear me out,” Matt replied. “Barrett’s been peddling iron in the Kitchen for as long as I can remember. He had a lock on the gun trade until you moved in. I’m betting he wasn’t happy to have competition. And he always has his ear to the ground, looking for ways to make a buck. The Fisk bitch would pay well for this kind of information.”

“Makes sense, boss,” Callahan commented.

“But no one knew about 44th Street, no one,” Greco insisted.

“You sure about that?” Matt asked. “You have customers, right?” 

Greco nodded, then remembered who he was talking to and said, “Uh, yes.”

“One unhappy customer, that’s all it would take. Someone who went back to Barrett and blabbed.”

“Damn, boss,” Greco said, “He might be right.”

“Take him out,” Owlsley ordered.

“How d’you want me to do it?” Matt asked.

Owlsley laughed, a short, sharp bark. “Not you.” He turned to Callahan. “Get Harris and Rivera.” Callahan nodded. Then Owlsley turned back to Matt. “Set it up with them. Where to find Barrett, when, that kind of thing. And make sure he disappears. This can’t come back to us.”

Matt nodded. “Understood.”

“Let me know when it’s done.”

It was a dismissal. Matt got to his feet, unfolded his cane, and walked out of Owlsley’s office.

  
An hour later, Matt was in a vacant apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, meeting with Owlsley’s enforcers, Ed Rivera and Carl Harris. He was relieved Owlsley hadn’t ordered him to kill Barrett himself, but it still stung that Owlsley had laughed at the idea. He could’ve done a better job than the two knuckleheads sitting across from him. He didn’t have to meet them to know who he was dealing with. On his way up the stairs, he heard one of them griping that he wasn’t “gonna take orders from no blind guy.” Where did Owlsley find these guys, for chrissake?

Not bothering to hide his impatience, Matt frowned and repeated, “Like I said, you gotta make him disappear. No body, no way it comes back to the boss. Got it?”

“Yeah,” Rivera grunted. “We got it.”

“So where do we find this asshole?” Harris asked.

Matt thought for a minute, then gave them two locations where he’d found Barrett in the past. Just not the recent past. He doubted Barrett would be at either one. He thought he knew where to find Barrett tonight. He only hoped he was right.

Harris had to challenge him, of course. “How d’you know where he’ll be? You ever actually, like, see him at these places you’re giving us?”

“Shut up, Carl,” Rivera snapped.

Matt lowered his voice to “Daredevil” range to answer. “I’ve lived in Hell’s Kitchen my whole life. I know assholes like Barrett. I know their hideouts. You think you know better, be my guest.”

“OK,” Rivera said irritably. “Let’s get going.” He stood up and started to walk away.

_“Not now,”_ Matt ordered, adding a muttered “Jesus” under his breath. These guys definitely weren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. “What part of ‘make him disappear’ did you not understand? You need to do it tonight, late. Got it?”

Rivera sat down. “Yeah, we got it,” he said, sounding resentful.

“Barrett’s a night owl, anyway,” Matt explained. “He’ll be holed up somewhere during the day.”

“If you say so,” Harris said doubtfully. He stood up and walked away, followed by Rivera.

“Report to me here in the morning,” Matt called after them.

“Yeah, yeah, we got it,” Rivera said, waving his hand.

Matt slumped down in his chair. Shit. This could be a real clusterfuck, unless Daredevil got to Barrett first.

  
That night, Matt put on his Daredevil gear and slipped out of his apartment as soon as the 8th floor was quiet. Barrett wasn’t at the first place he looked, a vacant tenement on 49th, or the second, the boarded-up storefront where Matt had found him four days earlier. He finally located the gun dealer at an abandoned warehouse a block from the river.

“Shit,” Barrett said when he saw Matt entering the building. “You again?”

“Nice to see you, too, Turk.”

Barrett gave a heavy sigh. “Now what?”

“You need to listen to me very carefully,” Matt told him. “We may not have much time. Owlsley’s coming for you.”

“For me?”

“Yeah. He thinks you’re the one who tipped off Vanessa Fisk about the location of his gun stash.”

“Shit,” Barrett swore. “I never told that bitch nothing. I only told you.” Realization dawned as he grasped the implications of what he’d just said. He launched himself at Matt, yelling “You son of a bitch!” and swinging wildly.

Matt dodged the blow and used Barrett’s momentum to flip him onto his back. “It wasn’t me,” he said when the gun dealer was lying at his feet. “Owlsley must’ve figured it out.”

“Bullshit. You told the bitch, then ratted me out to The Owl.”

That was exactly what Matt did, but Barrett was never going to know it. “I swear, it wasn’t me,” he repeated. “But that’s beside the point. Two of Owlsley’s goons are in the Kitchen right now, looking for you. It’s only a matter of time before they find you. You want to live, you need to run.”

Barrett pushed himself to his feet, groaning. “Shit,” he complained. “I got things to do, places to be.”

“The only place you need to be is out of this city. _Tonight_.”

“God damn you, D.”

“Just go. And don’t come back until it’s safe.”

“When will that be?”

“You’ll know,” Matt assured him. “Go on, go.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Barrett said as he left the building. Matt stayed where he was until Barrett’s footsteps faded away.

  
In the morning, Matt was waiting for Rivera and Harris in the vacant apartment where they’d met the day before. He was drinking the last of his coffee when he heard their footsteps ascending the stairs. Rivera sat down heavily in a chair across from him. Harris remained standing.

“He wasn’t there,” Rivera said, “not at either place.”

“Yeah, and he wasn’t anywhere else, neither,” Harris added. 

“Damn,” Matt swore. “Barrett always was a slippery son of a bitch.”

“Coupla people we talked to said he left the city,” Rivera said.

“Could be,” Matt agreed. “Barrett’s not stupid. If he heard about what happened, he had to know the boss would come looking for him.”

“So what do we do now?” Rivera asked.

Matt gave his best impression of thinking, then said, “If Barrett is really gone – and, yeah, he is, like I said, he’s not stupid – he’s no longer a problem. We don’t do anything.”

“Yeah, but what do we tell the boss?” Harris asked.

“ _We_ don’t tell him anything,” Matt replied pointedly. “I’ll tell him Barrett’s been taken care of. And you keep your mouths shut.”

“I don’t know – ” Rivera began.

Matt interrupted him. “I do. You really want me to go to the boss and tell him you couldn’t find the asshole?”

That finally seemed to sink in. Matt guessed there was some kind of non-verbal communication between the two men, that he couldn’t pick up. Then they nodded to each other, as if cementing an agreement.

“I’ll handle the boss. And you two probably should make yourselves scarce, as in get the hell out of the city.”

He didn’t have to tell them twice. Rivera got to his feet and followed Harris out of the apartment. 

  
When he got to the office, Matt went straight to Owlsley’s corner suite. Callahan was at his desk in the outer office.

“Boss in?” Matt asked, standing next to the desk and gripping his cane tightly.

“No,” Callahan told him, “out of town. You got something for him?”

“Yeah.”

“What?” Callahan sounded impatient.

“Barrett’s been taken care of.”

Callahan didn’t look up from his computer. “Good. I’ll let him know. Anything else?”

“No, that’s it.” Matt turned and left before it occurred to Callahan to ask him for the details. Once back at his desk, he fell into his chair and let out his breath all at once. That was easy, too easy. He only hoped Barrett would stay away, along with Rivera and Harris. And that Owlsley wouldn’t ask too many questions when he returned.

  
Two days later, when Owlsley returned from wherever he’d been, Matt spent the day waiting to be summoned to his office to be interrogated about Barrett. The summons never came. Apparently Owlsley had moved on to other things. Matt needed to know what they were. And he was becoming increasingly antsy. His cover had lasted far longer than he had any right to expect. He knew the reason: no one suspected the blind guy. Vanessa had called it, from the beginning. Owlsley had underestimated him. If Matt had his way, Owlsley would pay for that mistake, big time. But he knew it was only a matter of time before Owlsley saw through his “blind guy” act, and he was burned. He had to find a way to bring down Owlsley before that happened.

Matt thought he knew a way to find out what Owlsley was planning, but he couldn’t do it himself. That evening, he asked his neighbors on the 8th floor to meet him in his apartment. When he’d filled their drink orders, and all four of them were sitting around his coffee table, he asked, “So which one of you looks like you could’ve gone to college with me?”

Mandy laughed and said, “Not me. What’s this about, Mike?”

“I think Owlsley’s working on something big, something we can use to take him down. I don’t know what or when, but I think the answers may be in the safe in his office. We need to get a look at what’s in that safe.” Matt smiled wryly. “But I could use some help with the ‘getting a look’ part.”

“Why someone from college?” Jay asked.

“I’m having a drink with an old friend from college after work. My friend comes to the office to meet me. That gets them into the building.”

Mandy took a sip of her drink and nodded. “That should work.”

“So who’s my friend?” Matt asked.

“Jay and I are out, so it’s gotta be Nick,” Mandy replied, referring to the occupant of apartment 8C. “He’s the only one of us who’s the right age.”

“Got that right,” Jay muttered under his breath.

Matt turned toward Nick. “You OK with this?”

“Sure. But aren’t you forgetting something?”

Matt raised his eyebrows quizzically. “What’s that?”

“How’re we gonna get into the safe?”

“I got that covered.”

Mandy laughed. “Of course you do.”

Matt smiled smugly. “I can’t see a damn thing, but my hearing’s fantastic.”

“Somehow, I think there’s a little more to it than that,” Mandy observed.

“Not really.”

Jay spoke up. “This is all very interesting, but why do you think Owlsley’s planning something big?”

Matt picked up his glass and turned it around in his hands, then set it down without drinking. “It’s hard to explain, just a feeling I have.”

“You mean a hunch?”

“Not just a hunch. I’ve been hearing things, just bits and pieces but enough to tell me something’s going on. And I know how Owlsley operates. This is different.”

Jay sighed. “All right, but I gotta run it by Mrs. Fisk. It’s not exactly what we signed up for.”

“I _said_ I’m OK with it,” Nick protested.

“And I heard you,” Jay replied. “But Mrs. Fisk is the boss. It’s her decision. I’ll let you know.”

“OK,” Matt said, “but don’t take too long.”

“Believe me, man,” Jay told him, “you’re not the only one who wants to get this over with.”

On that note, the conversation ended. Vanessa’s three associates finished their drinks and left.

  
A little before seven the next evening, the phone on Matt’s desk rang. When he answered, one of the guards in the lobby told him Nick was there. “Send him up,” Matt said. He scanned the floor with his senses as he walked to the elevator to meet Nick. No heartbeats other than his own. The floor was empty. The elevator doors opened, and Nick stepped out.

“Hey, Mike.”

“Nick.” Matt jerked his head in the direction of Owlsley’s corner office. “This way.” He led the way down the hall. Other than trailing a hand along the wall, he didn’t bother with his blind act. If Nick noticed, so be it.

Just before they reached the boss’s office suite, Matt stopped and held up a hand. Nick stopped behind him. Matt inclined his head toward Owlsley’s office. “OK,” he said as he moved forward. “No one’s here.” Nick followed him into the inner office, closing the door behind them.

“Uh, Mike,” Nick said, “I don’t see a safe.”

“Of course you don’t,” Matt thought crossly. Making an effort to keep his voice even, he said, “It’s hidden somewhere, probably in the wall. Look for a picture or something on the wall, big enough to have a safe behind it.”

“OK.”

While Nick did a visual search, Matt conducted a search of his own, tapping the walls at intervals and listening for the change in sound that would reveal the location of the safe. He found it first.

“Here,” he said, pointing to the area where the sound changed.

“Yeah, there’s a picture there,” Nick confirmed.

“Check around the outside for a latch or something,” Matt instructed him.

“Got it!” Nick exclaimed.

“Keep your voice down, for chrissake,” Matt hissed.

“I thought you said no one was here.”

“I did, but that could change.”

“Oh. Right.” Nick released the latch, and the painting swung away from the wall, exposing the safe behind it. Matt stepped past him and leaned in toward the safe, placing the fingertips of his left hand on the door next to the dial. Nick had the good sense to keep his mouth shut as he watched Matt move the dial, listening intently. A little more than two minutes passed before he heard the click that signaled the opening of the lock. Matt raised his head and pulled the door open.

Matt ran his hands over the safe’s contents as Nick described them. “Top shelf is files. Bottom shelf is money and boxes.”

Matt picked up a stack of files and handed them to Nick. “The files are what we’re after. Get started.”

Nick placed the files on Owlsley’s desk, then took out a miniature camera and started photographing the papers in the files. They soon fell into a rhythm, with Matt taking each folder as Nick finished photographing its contents. He set the folders aside, careful to keep them in order. They had to go back into the safe exactly as they were originally.

About halfway through the stack, the clicking of the camera’s shutter stopped. “Holy shit,” Nick breathed, “I think this is what we’re looking for.”

“Keep going,” Matt ordered him in a whisper. The clicking resumed.

They were nearing the bottom of the stack when Matt tilted his head, then hissed, “Stop. Someone’s coming.”

“We’re almost done,” Nick protested.

“No time,” Matt replied. He grabbed the last few folders and added them to the stack, then returned them to the safe and closed it. He swung the painting into place and heard the latch click. His mind raced, trying to come up with a plausible cover story. He’d considered this possibility but failed to come up with one. Maybe he could say he was looking for something, like his phone? No. That wasn’t gonna work. The last time he was in Owlsley’s office was two days ago. Damn. He’d just have to bullshit his way out of it.

“What do we do?” Nick whispered.

“Follow my lead.” It was hard to pick up footsteps on the carpeted floor, but they were coming closer. Matt grabbed Nick’s arm and propelled him to the wall, behind the door. That would at least give them some cover if someone came in. The footsteps entered the outer office. He could hear the person’s heartbeat: Callahan. 

Drawers opened and closed, as if Callahan was looking for something in his desk. “God damn it!” he yelled, slamming a drawer closed. Then he left the room, his heartbeat and footsteps growing fainter.

“Wha – ?” Matt clapped his hand over Nick’s mouth before he could finish the word.

“Quiet,” Matt hissed. “He’s still here.” 

Along the hallway to the elevator, office doors opened and closed, the sounds punctuated by Callahan’s curses. When Callahan was about halfway to the elevator, Matt heard a door slam, accompanied by more curses. Then Callahan’s footsteps headed toward the elevator. 

After the elevator dinged to signal its arrival, followed by the doors opening and closing, Matt gave a sigh of relief. “He’s gone.”

They waited a little while longer, at Matt’s insistence, then made their way carefully out of the corner office suite. They had almost made it to the elevator when Matt heard it ascending. He shoved Nick into the nearest office and shut the door. “Someone’s coming.”

It was Callahan, again. He went past them and back into Owlsley’s suite. Matt turned to Nick. “Go, now. I’ll distract him.”

“But – ” Nick protested.

“No ‘buts.’ You have to get those photos out of here. I can handle Callahan.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. Now go.” Matt pushed Nick out of the office, toward the elevator. They were in luck. The car was still there. The doors closed, and the elevator descended.

Matt leaned against the office wall and weighed his options. Now that he thought about it, bullshitting Callahan wasn’t a great idea. He didn’t want anyone to know he’d been here, in case Owlsley suspected his safe had been broken into. He couldn’t be entirely certain everything was put back exactly as it was. He would just have to wait and hope Callahan didn’t start searching the offices again, especially this one, where he hadn’t searched before.

No such luck. Callahan came back down the hall, stopping at an office a few doors away. He went in, then left, slamming the door and muttering curses under his breath, and went into the next office. Matt had to move. He slipped out of his hiding place, sprinted down the hall to the stairwell door, and made it into the stairwell. He reached out to catch the door before it closed, but he wasn’t fast enough, and it clicked shut behind him. Callahan must have heard the click, because he called out, “Hello! Anyone here?”

Matt ran down the stairs. Before he reached the landing, he vaulted over the handrail onto the next set of stairs, bypassing the landing completely. He kept going until he was five floors below where he started. He paused for a moment, listening for a pursuer. No one was in the stairwell, but the door opened five floors above: Callahan. Matt flattened himself against the wall, hoping he was out of Callahan’s line of sight. Footsteps descended, then stopped. Matt held his breath. The footsteps went back up, and the stairwell door closed above him. He let out his breath and made his way down the remaining flights to the lobby.


	11. Undercover, Part Seven

_Matt_

When Matt got back to Mike’s apartment, Nick was waiting for him outside his door. “Man! Am I glad to see you!” he exclaimed as Matt stepped off the elevator. “How’d you get away?”

“Took the stairs.”

“Oh.” Nick paused for a beat, then continued, “You were right, man, The Owl’s got something big planned. He’s – ”

Matt interrupted him. “Not here,” he said as he opened the door to his apartment.

“Oh. OK.” Nick followed him inside.

Matt went into the kitchen and grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge, then made his way into the living room. Nick was already on the couch. Matt handed him a beer, then took a seat in one of the chairs opposite him.

After they both drank, Nick gushed, “That was so cool, man, the way you cracked that safe. I’ve never seen anything like it. How’d you do it?”

“Practice.”

“You’re gonna keep working for us when this is over, right?”

“Probably not gonna happen.” Matt took another drink and set the bottle down on the coffee table in front of him. “So, you were saying – ”

“Oh. Yeah. Um, Owlsley’s got a huge shipment of H coming in, two nights from now. All the details were in the safe.”

“How much?”

“Tons."

Matt raised his eyebrows. “Tons?”

Nick nodded. “Yeah, like ten tons, coming in on a container ship.”

“Jesus,” Matt breathed. This was it, his chance to take down The Owl, but he only had two days to plan. “OK,” he said, “send me a text with the details, then get everything to Vanessa. Now.”

“Tonight?” 

“Yes, tonight.”

“You got it.” Nick finished his beer and left. A few minutes later, Matt’s phone pinged. An incoming text. He listened to the information sent by Nick and committed it to memory, then deleted the message. Time to get to work. A plan was coming together in his mind. If it worked, he would be back at Nelson & Murdock with Foggy and Karen in a few days. Don’t think about that now, he told himself. Too many things could still go wrong.

The next morning, he went into the office as usual. He could sense an undercurrent of excitement swirling around the place, but otherwise it seemed like “business as usual.” Then, as he was returning to his desk after lunch, he overheard Callahan talking to someone. He didn’t recognize the other voice.

“I’m telling you,” Callahan was saying, “There’s something familiar about him. I’ve seen him somewhere before.”

“You know what they say,” the other man said, “everyone has a twin somewhere.”

“No, it’s not that. There aren’t that many blind guys from Hell’s Kitchen. Not guys his age, anyway. No, I’ve seen him before, I’m sure of it. I just can’t place him.”

“It’ll come to you, eventually,” the other man assured him. “Just give it time.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Callahan’s footsteps walked away.

Shit. Matt’s mind raced. His picture had been in the papers and on the Internet, after the Aaron James trial. But that was more than six months ago. Was that what Callahan was remembering? His blood ran cold. His appearance had changed since then, but maybe it hadn’t changed enough. There was no way for him to know.

He left the office in the middle of the afternoon, saying he had “things” to take care of in Hell’s Kitchen. He did, but it wasn’t Owlsley’s business, it was his business – taking down The Owl and coming out alive.

On the morning of the next day, the day of the shipment’s scheduled arrival, he had just come back from the break room with a cup of coffee when his co-worker told him, “Denny was looking for you. You’re wanted in the boss’s office.”

Matt put his coffee cup down. “Oh. OK.” Then he turned and headed down the hall, to Owlsley’s office. When he got there, Owlsley, Callahan, Greco, and several men he didn’t recognize were waiting for him. Shit. This was not good. Callahan must have figured out that he was in the office, two nights ago. He stood in the doorway, gripping his cane, waiting to be invited in.

“Mike. Come in, come in,” Owlsley said. “Have a seat.”

Greco guided him to the only vacant chair in the room. He sat down and folded his cane, then turned his face toward Owlsley, waiting for whatever was coming.

“We have an . . . important operation planned for tonight,” Owlsley said, “and I may have a need for someone with your . . . skills.”

“Uh, sure. Whatever you need.”

“Good. Tommy will meet you here at 10. He’ll give you a ride to the, ah, . . . location.”

“Understood. I’ll be here.”

“And this stays in this room.”

“Got it.” Matt stood up, unfolded his cane, and turned to leave. “See you tonight.”

Once back at his desk, Matt tried to puzzle out what was behind Owlsley’s invitation. He didn’t think for a minute that Owlsley wanted him at tonight’s operation for his fighting skills. He had plenty of men who were skilled fighters, men who weren’t blind. Had Callahan finally remembered where he’d seen “Mike Murphy” before? Would his ride with Greco be the last one he’d ever take? He hadn’t picked up any lies or threats when he was in Owlsley’s office, but it was still possible. 

If that was Owlsley’s plan, what was he going to do about it? One option was not showing up to meet Greco tonight. But that would only make Owlsley suspicious, or confirm his suspicions if he already was. There was no guarantee Owlsley would be taken down at the pier tonight. If he wasn’t, he would find out who “Mike Murphy” was, sooner or later. When he did, Matt Murdock wasn’t the only one who would be in danger; Foggy and Karen would be, too. That was unacceptable. No, he would just have to show up and trust his ability to find a way out of the situation he found himself in, whatever that turned out to be.

He left the office as early as he could without arousing suspicion. He spent the early evening at Mike’s apartment, finalizing the arrangements he’d put in place. When he was finished, he put on the black business suit made for him by Melvin Potter. The armored lining might prove useful tonight. Then he put on his dark glasses, picked up his cane, and headed downtown to meet Greco.

When Matt arrived at the office building a little before 10, Greco was waiting for him in the lobby.

“No point going all the way up, then coming right back down,” he explained.

“You got that right.”

“Car’s out front.” Greco moved next to Matt, who took his arm and followed him outside. 

Greco led Matt to the passenger side of the car, then got behind the wheel. After he pulled away from the curb, he turned to Matt and asked, “Aren’t you curious about where we’re goin’?”

“Sure,” Matt replied, “but I thought it was ‘need to know,’ you know.”

“Yeah, it is, but that don’t make no difference now.” Matt’s heart leaped into his throat. That sounded ominous. Then Greco continued, “You’ll be there soon enough. We’re going to Pier 88, West 48th Street. The boss has a big shipment coming in.”

“A shipment?”

“Heroin, top of the line shit. When it hits the streets, it’ll be enough to keep all the junkies in the city happy for . . . hell, I don’t know how long. A long time, though.”

“Wow,” Matt breathed.

They lapsed into silence for several minutes, then Matt said, “You know, I’m still not clear on why Mr. Owlsley wants me to be there tonight.”

“To be honest, neither am I,” Greco told him, “but he said he wanted you there, and I was to bring you. So here we are.”

“Here we are,” Matt agreed. After a moment, he added, “Don’t get me wrong, I got no problem doing whatever it is he needs me to do. I’m just grateful he gave me a chance. It’s not easy for someone like me to get a job.”

“No, I guess it’s not,” Greco said, as if it was the first time that had occurred to him. A minute later, the car turned toward the curb and stopped. “We’re here,” he announced.

They got out of the car and walked onto the pier. Owlsley and Callahan were waiting for them at its midpoint. Owlsley acknowledged their arrival.

“Tommy. Mike.”

“Lee.”

“Mr. Owlsley.”

Machinery whirred: a crane lowering a shipping container onto the pier. It landed with a soft thud. Two men approached it.

“Open it,” Owlsley ordered.

One of the men opened the doors, while the other started up a forklift standing nearby. He drove it to the open container, lifted out a pallet, and set it down on the pier. The two men removed the straps and plastic securing the contents, then opened the large box that was on the pallet. “What the fuck, man?” one of them muttered. “It’s a washing machine.”

Owlsley turned to Callahan and ordered, “Check it. I don’t trust those sons of bitches.”

“You got it, boss.” Callahan took a box cutter from one of the men and opened the carton, throwing aside the packing materials inside it. Then he opened the door on the front of the washer and reached inside. He pulled out something oblong, wrapped in plastic. He used the box cutter to slice open the wrappings and tasted the contents.

“It’s the real shit,” he told Owlsley.

“Good,” Owlsley said. Then he turned to a group of men standing farther down the pier. “Get moving. This shit needs to be at 37th Street before morning.” Not waiting for them to respond, he turned and walked away, entering the warehouse at the base of the pier.

A second shipping container landed with a thud. It, too, was opened and checked. As soon as Callahan pulled a package from a clothes dryer and confirmed its contents, Brett Mahoney’s amplified voice boomed over the pier. “NYPD! Drop your weapons and get down on the ground!”

Not a moment too soon. A convoy of vehicles was approaching, a few blocks away. Vanessa’s people. Then they turned away from the pier, apparently having noticed the police presence. 

On the pier, heads turned as The Owl’s men looked at each other. Matt could sense their uncertainty. But there was no one to tell them what to do. Owlsley was long gone. Finally, one of them raised his gun and fired in the direction of Mahoney’s voice. His round failed to find its target. A moment later, a well-placed shot brought him down. He was still breathing. Good. That made the decision for them. One by one, they put down their weapons and got down on the ground. Greco and Matt did the same. There was nowhere to run.

  
Four hours later, Matt was sitting in the corner of a reeking holding cell at the 15th Precinct, breathing through his mouth. He had sensed Mahoney’s shock at seeing him among the arrestees, but fortunately, Brett kept his mouth shut. Callahan and Greco were there, along with about a dozen of Owlsley’s men. Over the past couple of hours, a few of them had been taken out of the cell, then returned shortly afterward. They all reported the detectives were trying to find someone to flip on Owlsley. All denied cooperating. Then it was Matt’s turn. An officer came to the cell door and called out, “Murphy!” Matt felt his way along the wall – the cops had taken his cane – until he reached the front of the cell. The officer handcuffed him, then grabbed his arm to lead him to an interrogation room. Brett Mahoney was waiting for him there. He ordered the officer to uncuff Matt, then guided him to a chair.

“Mike Murphy, is it?” he asked sarcastically after the officer left the room. “I like the haircut, by the way.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, imitation is the best form of flattery, you know.”

“Oh.” Now he knew how Brett wore his hair.

“What the hell d’you think you’re playing at, Murdock?” Brett demanded.

Matt waved his hand. “Isn’t it obvious?”

Brett gave a disgusted huff. “You really went undercover in Owlsley’s organization? Jesus Christ.”

“We weren’t getting anywhere, Brett, you know that. Someone had to do it.”

“And that someone just had to be you.”

Matt shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“Not so much.”

Shit. “What d’you mean?”

“I don’t think we have to worry any more about Owlsley taking over Hell’s Kitchen, and we seized a shitload of H. But we don’t have Owlsley.”

“Damn. What happened?”

“He got past us at the pier. He went into the warehouse next to it. He must’ve gotten out through the basement. The buildings along there are all connected. A private jet left Teterboro a little after 2 this morning. We think he was on it. Flight plan said it was headed to the Caymans, but I doubt that was his final destination.”

“No, it wouldn’t be. Probably just a stop to stash some money,” Matt observed. “He’ll find a place where he can’t be extradited.”

“Yeah,” Brett agreed grimly. “Oh, well, at least I finally got a chance to arrest your ass.”

“You did. What’re you gonna do about it?”

Brett sighed. “Honestly, I don’t know. You were there, on the pier, with Owlsley’s men, but we have don’t have evidence you actually did anything to aid and abet the transportation of the drugs. Why _were_ you there, anyway?”

“No idea. Owlsley never said.”

Brett frowned. “I really don’t want to know what you’ve been doing for the last couple of months, but you did phone in the ‘anonymous’ tip about the shipment, and that counts for something. I’m gonna recommend to the ADA that we cut you loose, for now.”

“OK. Thanks.” Matt thought for a moment, then added. “But can you make it look like I got bailed out? Once I get out of here, ‘Mike Murphy’ will disappear, but I need to keep my cover until then.”

Brett nodded. “Yeah, I can do that, but you’ll be stuck here longer. You’ll have to wait until the morning to go in front of the judge to be arraigned and have your bail set.”

“I know. And now I should get back. I shouldn’t be here too long.”

“Right.” Brett stood up and called for an officer to take Matt to the holding cell.

When Matt got back there, Greco was waiting for him. “How’d it go?” Greco asked.

“About what you’d expect,” Matt replied. “They wanted me to flip on the boss, ‘the first to make a deal gets the best deal,’ the usual bullshit. They probably thought I’d be an easy mark. I told them to pound sand and demanded a lawyer.”

“Good.”

“That detective, Mahoney, he let something slip,” Matt added, trying to sound casual. “He said they think the boss left the country.”

“Son of a bitch,” Greco growled.

“Yeah.”

  
It was early afternoon by the time Matt was bailed out. His lawyer, who introduced himself as Ray Phillips, one of Ben Donovan’s associates, led him to a waiting cab that dropped him off at Mike Murphy’s apartment. After he stepped off the elevator and approached the door to 8B, he realized there were people already inside the apartment. He opened the door and stepped in.

“Hello, Matthew,” Vanessa said.


	12. Breach of Contract

_Matt_

“Vanessa,” Matt replied.

“Mandy, Jay, Nick,” Vanessa said, addressing the other three people in the room, “meet Matthew Murdock.”

“But, but, um, he said his name was ‘Mike’,” Nick spluttered.

“Jesus, Nick,” Mandy snapped, “try to keep up. What part of ‘undercover’ don’t you understand?”

“Oh.” 

“Have a seat,” Vanessa said, gesturing toward the couch. Matt sat at one end, with Mandy and Jay next to him. Vanessa and Nick took their seats in the armchairs across from them. The three operatives were all armed.

“What game are you playing, Matthew?” Vanessa demanded, her voice hard.

“No game.”

“But you tipped off the NYPD, didn’t you?”

No point in denying it. “I did.”

“That sounds like a breach of our contract.”

“Not at all,” Matt told her, “you were never in jeopardy.”

“You couldn’t know that,” Vanessa protested.

“You weren’t there. You’re too smart for that.”

“So why call the police?”

“If I hadn’t, and your people had showed up at the pier, it would have been a bloodbath.”

“And you think a bunch of trigger-happy cops would’ve stopped it?”

“Brett Mahoney would have,” Matt said. “And there’s another thing: no matter if you or Owlsley won, all that heroin would’ve been on the streets. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“Self-righteous prick,” Vanessa muttered.

“Why, thank you,” Matt said smugly.

“Do you have any idea how much money you cost me? How much I could’ve made off that heroin?”

“I have a pretty good idea.”

“That money was going to free Wilson, with enough left over to bankroll a legitimate business for us.”

Matt scoffed. “Wilson Fisk, going legitimate? He’s no more capable of going legitimate than I am of flying a plane.”

“It will happen eventually. It may take longer, because of you, but it will happen. You’ll see.”

Matt shook his head. “I doubt it.”

“Still,” she mused, as if thinking out loud, “today is a good day. You got rid of one problem for me. Wilson will be pleased. He’ll be even more pleased when he learns you’re out of the way, along with your friends.” She spat out the last word, as if it was distasteful to her. She turned and started to walk toward the door, then did a half turn and said, over her shoulder. “Do it.”

There was the sound of metal sliding on metal as two rounds were racked into two chambers. Then a third. Nick, probably.

“You might want to hear what I have to say, before your associates do something . . . irrevocable,” Matt suggested.

“I seriously doubt anything you have to say could be of interest to me,” she said scornfully.

“You’re going to hear it, one way or the other. You can learn about it now, or you can learn about it later. The hard way.”

Matt could sense Vanessa’s uncertainty as she turned back toward him. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t have them kill you, right now,” she said. 

“I don’t have one reason. I have six,” Matt told her.

“Six?”

“There are four people who have copies of a dossier I put together, with everything I have on you and your organization. You can’t stop them, or manipulate them, or buy them. If I don’t show up at the law office of Nelson & Murdock, alive and well, by six o’clock today, that dossier goes to the NYPD and the _Bulletin_.”

“And the other two reasons?”

“The two copies of the dossier that will be mailed to the NYPD and the _Bulletin_ at 6:01 p.m. if I don’t show up. I don’t think even you can intercept the U.S. Mail.”

“You’re bluffing.”

Matt shrugged. “So call it.”

“Maybe I will.” She paused for a moment, before something else apparently occurred to her. “What’s to stop me from ‘persuading’ you to contact your friends and call them off?”

“I suppose you could do that,” Matt replied thoughtfully. “But Foggy and Karen weren’t born yesterday, you know. I doubt they’d fall for it.” The three of them had also come up with code words for him to use if he was forced to make such a call. But if he was sufficiently convincing, Vanessa would never know about that precaution.

“Perhaps not, but I can take them all out, once you’re out of the way.”

“You could, maybe, but those two copies will still be in the mail,” Matt pointed out. “Besides, you’ll never get to all four of them in time. Two of them aren’t in the city. One isn’t even in the country. I’d prefer that you not kill any of them, of course, but all I need is one. And if you kill any of them, or go after Foggy or Karen, the others will release the dossier.”

“Four people, you say? Let me think.” Vanessa fell silent for several minutes. Finally, she said, “Three are your comrades-in-arms, so to speak: Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, and Danny Rand. But who is the fourth?” Another pause. Then: “Of course. Frank Castle. He was your client, wasn’t he?”

When Matt didn’t answer, she said, “You might as well tell me, you know. Jay here is quite skilled at . . . extracting information.”

Matt considered this. She was right: he would talk, eventually. And if he held out until after six o’clock, he was dead anyway. Vanessa would have no reason to keep him alive. “They’re the four,” he said.

“You’re probably right. I won’t be able to stop them, not in time to do me any good. So I’m supposed to just let you walk out of here?”

“Exactly. Then we go back to the status quo, more or less. I won’t go after you, as I agreed. But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna stand by and let your people tear Hell’s Kitchen apart. I won’t let that happen.” 

Matt thought for a moment, then something else occurred to him. “You claim you’re planning to go legit, right?” Vanessa nodded. “So do it. Prove me wrong. You don’t need the drug money. That’s just an excuse.”

“It would’ve helped,” she murmured. 

He ignored her. “And there’s one other stipulation. In consideration of the work I’ve done for you for the past two months, Foggy Nelson and Karen Page are off limits, permanently.”

“Why should Wilson and I agree to all that?”

“For one thing, I’ve still got the dossier. And if your people harm even a single hair on Karen Page’s head, well, I don’t like your chances when Frank Castle finds out about it. Your choice.”

A minute turned into five while Vanessa considered her options. Finally, she said, “I agree. Now get out before I change my mind.”

Matt went.

  
_Karen_

“Foggy! Stop pacing!” Karen ordered. “You’re gonna wear a hole in the carpet.”

“Who cares?” Foggy muttered. “It’s a piece of crap, anyway.” Then he resumed his pacing. “Where is he? He should be here by now.”

“It’s only 5:30,” Karen said soothingly. 

“But Brett said he got bailed out hours ago,” Foggy protested.

“His plan will work. You said so yourself, after we talked to him yesterday. He’ll be here.”

Foggy stopped pacing and fell into the chair behind his desk, then covered his face with his hands. “I can’t take any more of this.”

Karen rubbed the back of his neck. “I know.”

Foggy raised his head. “Are the envelopes ready to go? You know, in case . . . .” His voice trailed off.

“All ready,” Karen assured him. “Jessica’s associate Malcolm is standing by with them at the post office, waiting for our call. But we’re not gonna need them.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

Foggy looked at his watch. “C’mon, c’mon,” he muttered.

A few more minutes passed, then Foggy sprang out of his chair. “Was that the front door?”

He darted out from behind his desk and into the reception area. Karen followed him. The office door opened. Matt walked in with a big grin on his face. Foggy ran to him and wrapped him in a hug. Then he wrinkled his nose and stepped back. “Eww.”

“I spent the night in jail, remember?”

“Oh. Right. Remind me never to do that. And what’s with the hair?”

“You mean you don’t like it?”

“Honestly? I hate it,” Foggy admitted. “But at least it’s low maintenance. And it’ll grow back.”

“You got that right,” Matt laughed. Then he seemed to notice Karen for the first time.“Hey, Karen.”

“Hey, yourself,” she replied. “It’s good to have you back.”

“Just don’t hug me,” he warned.

“Not gonna happen,” she assured him, smiling.

“What took you so long, buddy?” Foggy asked. “Brett said you got out hours ago.”

“Uh, just, uh, wrapping things up with Vanessa,” Matt said. He had that shifty look he always got when he wasn’t telling them something, but Karen decided not to press him about it now. He looked tired. She’d get it out of him later. Instead, she commented, “Bummer that Owlsley got away.”

“Yeah. Mahoney thinks he was on a flight to the Caymans last night. But he’s out of Hell’s Kitchen, and his organization is toast. So there’s that.”

Foggy flopped down on the reception room couch. “Nice suit, by the way.”

“You think?” Matt ran a hand down one of the lapels. “Melvin made it.”

“Melvin Potter?”

“Yeah, it’s lined with his armor, like the suits he made for Fisk.”

“Cool.”

An anxious look crossed Matt’s face. “I should go, get cleaned up,” he said. He turned around and took a couple of steps toward the door.

“But you just got here,” Foggy protested.

“It’s OK,” Karen said. “You look tired, Matt. You’re right, you should go.” Then she spoke to Foggy. “Besides, we have to call everyone, let them know Matt’s safe,” Karen reminded him.

“Oh. Right,” Foggy said, pulling out his phone. “I’ll call Luke, Jessica, and Malcolm, you call Frank and Danny.”

“You got it,” Karen said as Matt walked out of the office. He stopped in the doorway and turned to face his friends.

“Thanks, guys. See you tomorrow.”

  
_Matt_

Matt stepped into his apartment, He didn’t want to admit it, but Karen was right. He was tired. A night in jail wasn’t exactly restful, especially when you were locked up with people you’d been double-crossing for months, and you could be exposed at any moment. He took a deep breath. Bad idea. He could still smell the stink of the jail on himself, overlaid with stress sweat from his confrontation with Vanessa. He stripped off his clothes and took a long shower, as hot as he could stand it. Afterward, as he was toweling off, most of the stink was gone, but he could still detect a hint of it. He shrugged. He had a bigger problem to deal with. When he and Foggy were talking about his suit and Melvin Potter, he remembered, to his horror, that his Daredevil gear was still in Mike Murphy’s apartment. Sooner or later, Vanessa’s people would clear out the place. He couldn’t allow them to find his stuff. He had to get to it before they did.

A little after midnight, Matt left his apartment and headed uptown, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt and a hoodie. He left his dark glasses and cane behind, hoping he could pass for a gym rat going home from a late-night workout. When he reached the block where Mike’s apartment building was located, he took to the roofs. Once on the roof of Mike’s building, he picked the lock on the stairwell door, and he was in. The eighth floor was quiet and empty. Apparently Mandy, Jay, and Nick had returned to their own homes. 

Matt slipped out of the stairwell and opened the door of 8B. The cops had returned his keys when he got out of jail, and Vanessa had neglected to take them from him. Once inside, he scanned the place. It hadn’t been cleared out yet. He went into the bedroom and opened the closet. His duffel was still there. He checked its contents: all there. He picked up the duffel and started to leave. Then he stopped and went back to the closet. The two other suits made by Melvin were still there. He swept them off their hangers and shoved them into the duffel, along with as many of the silk shirts as would fit. He smiled to himself as he left the apartment. He would never admit it, but Foggy wasn’t the only one who’d always wanted a good suit.

  
The next afternoon, Foggy and Karen were in the conference room when Matt returned from meeting a new client. The news of Owlsley’s downfall was playing on Karen’s laptop. Before going to join them, Matt dropped his briefcase and cane on his desk and took off his jacket, then took a bottle of Scotch out of his desk drawer. On the way to the conference room, he picked up three glasses in the break room.

As Foggy poured their drinks, he said, “I went to see Brett this afternoon and gave him the flash drives with everything you have on Owlsley.”

“Good,” Matt said.

“He said to thank you, but he’s still looking forward to the day when he can arrest your ass – for real, next time.”

“I’m sure he is,” Matt said dryly.

“He also said Jimmy Callahan flipped on Owlsley.”

“No way,” Matt said. “He told me Owlsley saved his life. He’d never turn on him.”

“I don’t know about that, but he did. Brett said he went ballistic when he learned that Owlsley had bailed on him. He was ready to unload on Owlsley without even getting a deal, but his lawyer stopped him.”

Matt shook his head. “Won’t do much good, if they can’t get to Owlsley.”

“They will,” Foggy said. “Guys like him, they think they’re so smart, but they always make a mistake. Eventually.”

Matt kept his doubts to himself and simply said, “I hope you’re right.” He picked up his glass and swirled the liquid around in it before drinking.

When he set his glass down, Karen asked, “So – how’d it go, with Vanessa?”

“OK,” Matt replied. “We, uh, confirmed that my deal with Fisk still stands.” Foggy had been right about Vanessa’s intentions, but there was no way in hell he was going to tell them what happened in Mike’s apartment yesterday afternoon. Foggy and Karen wouldn’t be happy if they learned he was keeping things from them, but that was something they didn’t need to know.

“Do you trust her?” Foggy asked.

“For now, I do,” Matt said. “She knows it’s in her best interests to honor the deal. And she claims she’s going legit.”

“But that could change,” Karen pointed out.

Matt nodded. “It could. It probably will, knowing Fisk. And if it does, we will deal with it – together.”

They fell silent for a few minutes, drinking Scotch and listening to the news reports on Karen’s laptop. Then Foggy gestured toward the screen. “You did this, buddy, you should be proud.”

“It wasn’t me, it was ‘Mike Murphy,’ with your help,” Matt said with a smile.

“To ‘Mike Murphy’,” Karen said, lifting her glass.

Foggy and Matt echoed her. “To ‘Mike Murphy’.” 

They clicked their glasses and drank.


End file.
